


Equilibrate

by AuthorinExile



Series: Balancing Act [1]
Category: Elder Scrolls, Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim
Genre: Accidental Plot, Additional Warnings In Author's Note, Alchemy, Amnesia, Amnesiac Reader, Angst, Archery, Assume that All the Awful Stuff is Graphic Just to be Safe, Author loves to chat in the Comments, Canon Compliant, Depression, Developing Friendships, Dragonborn is a Beautiful Psychopath, Dragonborn is a Dragon in a Mortal's Body, Elder Scrolls Lore, Elder Scrolls: Oblivion References and Lore, Emotional Hurt/Comfort, Female Friendship, Gen, Graphic Depictions of Illness, Graphic Description, Graphic Description of Corpses, Healing, I Tried, I Wrote This Instead of Sleeping, I hope, Ignoring the Problem is Not a Solution, Injury Recovery, It Gets Worse, It Gets Worse Before It Gets Better, Look at You, Major Character Injury, Male Friendship, Male-Female Friendship, Mostly Canon Compliant, Multi, No Romance, Original Character(s), Other Additional Tags to Be Added, Reader Gets Pretty Beaten Up, Reader Has No Desire to be Heroic, Reader Has a Thing for Muscles, Reader Is Not Dragonborn, Reader Tries to be the Good Guy, Reader Turns Into a Pessimist Pretty Quickly, Reader is Moderately Successful, Reader is Not a Fighter, Reader-Insert, Reading All These Tags, Realistic, Retrograde Amnesia, Scars, Self Confidence Issues, Self-Esteem Issues, Short Chapters, Skyrim Main Quest, Skyrim Side Quests, Some Plot, Swearing, Temporary Amnesia, The Characters That Mysteriously Vanish In-Game are Super Dead Here, Training, Trauma, Travel, Unhealthy Coping Mechanisms, Weird Plot Shit, You Have Been Warned, You're Actually Kinda Lame, good for you, long chapters, playing fast and loose with canon
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2017-12-30
Updated: 2018-10-02
Packaged: 2019-02-24 01:48:14
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence, Major Character Death
Chapters: 27
Words: 38,100
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/13203129
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/AuthorinExile/pseuds/AuthorinExile
Summary: The Dragonborn: a fierce man with the heart of a warrior, the mind of a conqueror, and the ancient soul of a dragon.He is the Nordic ideal in every conceivable way. He is honorable, proud, and mighty, attracting friends and foes alike in vast quantities.He was also blessed with a fantastic ass.Sadly, this is not his story.No. This is the story of the one other idiot too lucky to get eaten.You.Welcome to Skyrim.





	1. The Wagon

You wake to a pulsing pain in your right temple and the sounds of men chattering all around you. Your vision is worryingly blurry, but you can make out the forms of four large men--Nords, maybe--sitting all around you. They are clearly the ones talking, but you can barely make out a word over the ringing in your ears.

  
You don’t remember drinking in excess last night, but you must be badly hungover anyway. The room shouldn’t be swaying as it is, that’s for damn sure. If you really focus, you can almost see trees…

  
The man on your immediate right finally notices that you’re moving about and steadies you with a gentle hand on your shoulder.

  
“Easy there,” he whispers like distant thunder, “You took a nasty blow to the head. Damn that soldier--I told him to help you. Are you alright?”

  
Most of the haze has cleared from your vision by now, but the man in front of you still appears dreamlike. He is the most Nordic Nord you’ve ever seen in your life, sturdy as a fortress and as steady as the mountains, with hair like spun gold and eyes as clear blue as any mountain stream or early spring morning.

  
As he watches you with only a gentle worry in his eyes, you become intensely aware of your tangled hair, your grimy skin, and the fact that you haven’t washed your mouth in nearly three days.

  
This perfect, beautiful man makes you feel like a goblin.

  
“Uh…” you mumble intelligently. “Yeah, I’m fine. I will be fine, at least. My head is--”

  
And as you reach to rub at your bruised scalp, you notice the bonds on your wrists. Then you see the clothes you’re wearing, which are certainly not yours and clearly not made for you and absolutely not how you had ever dressed. Vaguely, you wonder why you aren’t cold, but that is quickly moved to the bottom of your To Worry About list.

  
You are in the back of a wagon in unfamiliar countryside surrounded by soldiers. You are quite obviously a prisoner and very clearly being held captive alongside men wearing the colors of the Stormcloaks. Judging by the armed guard accompanying this wagon, you are also being held with the same amount of hostility as these men.

  
And you have no idea how you got there.


	2. Helgen

Okay, so you aren’t exactly completely clueless about how you ended up on a one-way ride to Decapitation Central.

  
(No one else had laughed when you called it that. That was their problem--you were _clearly_ hilarious.)

  
Your memory was spotty at best and outright blank at worst. You could remember a handful of instances in crystal clarity, but they mostly seemed to be moments from your childhood or your education. Sometimes, you thought you could remember something, but it was never totally clear when those specific memories had actually taken place. Unfortunately, trying to remember exactly what you had forgotten gave you a migraine like you had never before experienced that, when coupled with your horrendous head injury, almost made you wish the headsman would hurry it up and start chopping.

  
(None of them had thought that was particularly funny, either.)

  
But you definitely had some memories, though they were mostly hazy and unclear. You remember trying to sneak across the border, but you can’t for the life of you remember why you wanted to come to this war-torn hellhole. You remember a few of your family members being with you, but when you ask after your mother and siblings, Beautiful Nord only shakes his head a bit sadly.

  
Under any other circumstances, that simple act and the weight behind it would have absolutely and totally destroyed you, but something about facing your imminent demise has left you feeling hollow, dull. As if you’ve been wrapped in miles of cotton, and nothing that hits you can stay there for very long.

  
Eventually, you run out of forgotten things to tell this stranger about, and you fall into a thoughtful silence. Unfortunately for you, Beautiful Nord is allergic to quiet contemplation, apparently. He smiles at you almost timidly, but it’s still enough to take your breath away.

“Well, while I am sorry that the circumstances are not better, I am glad to have met you, little one.”

  
You are hardly little--not in any way that matters, at least--but the thought of this godlike figure thinking you are young and beautiful is pleasant, so you smile back instead of releasing the torrent of hatred-fueled ranting that normally follows such slights.

  
“I am called Fenrer,” he smiles again, and it takes you a moment to remember that you should give him your name because that’s how social interaction has worked since the dawn of time itself.

  
When you finally tell him, his smile, wide and genuine, makes this dying thing seem almost worth it.

  
It seems almost worth it right up until the wagon stops in front of the executioner’s block, and then your knees start trembling.

  
The less beautiful Nord across from you has some smart quip on his tongue, obviously making light of the entire situation, but all you can hear is the headsman’s whetstone gliding over his blade.

  
Fenrer puts a hand on your arm and carefully helps you down from the wagon. He is trying his best to be kind, even as you stare death in the face, and the gesture is so sweet--if a bit ill-timed--that you force a smile his way.

  
There is a serious Imperial soldier with a scroll, as there always is, taking names and matching them to crimes.

  
The headsman is waiting for you, smiling behind a mask coated in the grime of the dead.

  
One of your wagon-mates tries to make a run for it and gets an arrow in the heart for his trouble. You watch him tumble over, like a puppet with cut strings, and swallow your sick.

  
The Imperial soldier reaches Fenrer and pauses, puzzled.

  
“Captain, he’s not on the list…”

  
“To the block.”

  
You think the soldier apologizes, but you can’t tell over the pulsing of your own blood, loud in your ears.

  
They are sentencing innocents to death, and it terrifies you.

  
You stare as Fenrer is led away, and silently hope that you go before he does. It would be a shame to watch the light fade from the eyes of someone so kind.

  
The soldier just looks puzzled when he sees you.

  
“Um… Your name?”

  
You tell him through chattering teeth, and he turns to his superior.

  
“Captain, I’ve never even heard of this person. Can’t we--”

  
“No. Orders are orders.”

  
She grabs your arm and pulls you to stand beside Fenrer.

  
He’s still smiling.

  
You can’t force a smile anymore, not even for him.

  
You watch in terrified awe as a man is dragged forward and pushed to the block. His head comes off cleanly, blood sprays across Fenrer’s shirt, and you make sick on a Stormcloak’s boots.

  
You would be embarrassed, but what would be the point?

  
The Guard Captain calls Fenrer up, and you blink away your forming tears. Maybe if you just look away, they won’t notice. Maybe they just won’t care.

  
The headsman pushes Fenrer to his knees.

  
You take a breath, hold, and then nearly choke on it as a beast from your own worst nightmares lands on a tower above your heads.

  
“Oh, for fuck’s sake--”

  
The rest of your sentence, if there _was_ a rest of your sentence, is abruptly cut off when the creature opens its mouth and throws you to the ground effortlessly.

  
You narrowly avoid busting your head open like a ripe melon when you fall with the scream of, “Dragon!” still forming on your lips.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Questions, concerns, critiques? 
> 
> Comments are always welcome.


	3. Chase Sequence

You feel like the comic relief character in one of those shitty plays your grandmama was always dragging you off to see.

  
Fenrer had scooped you effortlessly off of the ground and headed directly for the nearest watchtower.

  
You had bounced along on his shoulder, staring at the most perfect ass you had ever seen on a man and feeling vaguely inferior.

  
The “Dragon Attack” thing hadn’t quite sunk in yet.

  
Once inside the watchtower, Fenrer steadies you on your own feet and begins picking at the knot of your bindings. He is stuck in a conversation with those Stormcloak fellows from the wagon, but he still spares enough attention to get your hands free.

  
You attempt to return the favor but only succeed in painfully bending your nails the wrong way.

  
The tallest of the men, Ulfric-- _the_ Ulfric, the Kingslayer and leader of the Stormcloaks, the one who caused all of this, _Gods you want to hit him_ \--directs Ralof and Fenrer to look for exits.

  
It isn’t right for Ulfric to give orders, not to civilians, but you go too. In a life or death situation, you can admit that you do better when someone else is making the big decisions.

  
No one stops to undo Fenrer’s bindings, and you regret that when you reach the hole in the wall.

  
“You’ll have to jump!”

  
“What.”

  
Ralof is shouting to be heard over the frenzied cries of the soldiers below, but he can’t have said what you think.

  
“He’s right,” oh, Fenrer, not you too, “I can’t, yet.” He nods to his bindings, which Ralof is hastily attempting to undo.

  
“Um…” you begin, as eloquent as ever, “I think I’ll just get eaten, thanks.”

  
Ralof grabs your tunic as you turn to descend the stairs and physically pulls you onto the edge. He is close enough that his beard rasps against your ear when he growls in a manner that could not possibly be anything but a threat, “Jump or be pushed.”

  
You decide to jump.

  
Unfortunately for you, you decide to jump just as Ralof decides to push.

  
The extra force sends you sideways and down, and it is only the edge of the ruined wall that keeps you from missing the house entirely. Your legs are now covered with awful looking scrapes and bleeding heavily, which matches your crusted head wound fairly nicely, you suppose.

  
As you descend to the ground floor, you make the rudest gesture you can think up at Ralof, halfway hoping he doesn’t catch it.

  
Of course, the Imperial soldier from before is standing in your path, helping civilians out of the dragon’s range.

  
When the monstrosity lands, you freeze up.

  
You can’t move, can’t even think of moving. It’s like seeing an out-of-control carriage careen down the road toward you. It’s like being a rabbit and staring down a drawn arrow. It’s like being prey. It’s like…

  
It’s…

  
It’s like staring down a dragon.

  
The thing _laughs_ , you swear that’s a laugh, and exhales fire.

  
The soldier drags you out of way, but not quite quickly enough.

  
Searing agony rips across the left side of your face, followed by a burst of white-hot pain at your hip.

  
“By the Gods! Here, take this!”

  
He tips a healing potion down your throat while you scream yourself hoarse.

  
The pain dulls to a somewhat simpler burning sensation, but you still feel as though you’ve stuck your face against hot embers. Your hip feels like it’s been branded.

  
It is, somehow, an improvement. The smell of cooking meat, that you _know_ is coming from your own flesh, is not.

  
The soldier pulls you into a shuffling run at his side. You don’t know if he intends to save you, jail you, or use you as bait, but in a manner of moments you have regained your bearings and started dashing through the crumbling city faster than he is capable of in his armor, faster than you have ever run in your life.

  
At one point, you leap over a dying woman as she groans in pain without even slowing, without hesitating, and you only realize it after the fact.

  
The pain of your newly acquired burns breaks through your haze of self-preservation somewhere around the large keep. Unable to move another inch of your own free will, you collapse on the stairs, struggling to breathe past the tightness in your chest without fainting dead away.

  
Fenrer reappears beside Ralof and looks remarkably shocked to see you alive and…

  
Well, alive, at the least.

  
As he rushes to your side, the Imperial-- _Hadvar_ , his name is Hadvar--shouts a group of expletives in Ralof’s general direction before turning towards you. Hadvar also looks shocked to see that you live, but you can’t even muster up the energy to be truly upset. With his help, Fenrer manages to drag you inside, to safety.

  
You’re impressed with yourself.

  
You didn’t faint until firmly on a bed.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This now has an alternate ending in Equilibristat, so be sure to check that out if you'd like to know What Could've Happened!


	4. In the Torchlight

You jolt awake and immediately regret it when your hip flares with pain. Your left cheek is numb, which you know to be a bad sign, and the skin feels tight, but your hip is burning like a dumpling left in a hot oven.

  
The sheer agony of it blinds you for a while, so you think you can be excused for only now realizing that you are in your smalls and your wounds have been neatly bandaged.

 

When you try to sit up and find out just _what in Oblivion_ is going on, a gentle hand in the center of your chest eases you back down.

  
Fenrer smiles down at you in relief. He is silhouetted in the torchlight, cast into shadows that accentuate his sharp features and imposing height. He has changed out of his prisoner’s garb and into an Imperial uniform that barely fits him. There’s a sword at his hip and a leather thong holding back his hair, enforcing the impression of a stern-faced soldier, ready and willing to do whatever he deems necessary to reach his goal. Still, he appears warm rather than threatening.

  
“Easy there, friend. You gave us quite the fright. We thought…”

  
He opts to flash you a tight smile instead of finishing his sentence, but you get a general idea.

  
They thought that you weren’t going to wake up in time. They thought that they would have to leave you here, tucked into a foreign bed and completely unaware of the dragon circling above you. They would’ve left you here, and the entire keep would have fallen down around you.

  
They would have left you here, and they would not have spared you a thought until they were free.

  
It’s chilling until you realize that you would have done the same.

  
You nod at him, trying to show your understanding without having to speak at all, and try to stand once more.

  
Once you get your legs moving, you realize why you weren’t cold before.

  
All of your limbs ache and feel stiff. Your skin tingles upon the slightest physical contact with anything, and you feel as though several stinging bugs are crawling through your joints. In the torchlight, you can see where some of your skin is still a bright red while patches of snowy white dot the landscape of your legs.

  
Of all your blurry memories, you remember your training in healing quite clearly, and you recognize the symptoms of early frostnip.

  
You sigh, “Where are my clothes?”

  
Hadvar steps forward and places a suit of armor at your feet.

  
“Gone. Useless,” he says. “Wear this, instead. Better protection from the cold, and certainly better against the arrows and swords that surely wait for us out there.”

  
You pause in your dressing and glance at the two men, trying to decide if Hadvar is serious about the possibility of a fight.

  
“By the Divines, you’re serious, aren’t you?”

  
Solemn nods answer your question, and you huff.

  
“Bloody lovely bit of news, that is. And just how are we supposed to escape a dragon when none of you can put aside your stupid war for more than a handful of moments?”

  
Hadvar looks taken aback by the venom in your voice, but Fenrer stops himself from nodding. It’s nice to think that such a gorgeous man might agree with you, but you’re too busy being angry to appreciate it.

  
“The Stormcloaks…” Hadvar sputters, but he doesn’t seem to know what to do with the rest of the thought.

  
“Hey,” Fenrer cuts in, “Why don’t you find yourself some weaponry? Just in case.”

  
You sigh but dutifully rummage through the many chests in the room until you find a steel shortsword. It looks almost just like the one your mother carried on her hip, and the memory brings tears to your eyes.

  
The tears begin to fall when you realize that you have no memories, hazy or otherwise, of ever properly training with a weapon. The best you can conjure up is an image of dueling your older brother with a large stick, but you aren’t even sure if that really happened. Either way, you are not about to tell the two men who willingly waited for you to wake up that you can’t even pull your own weight.

  
You sigh and pick up the key in the bottom of the chest, tossing it to Hadvar as you turn.

  
“Here. Can we please get the fuck out of this nightmare, now?”

  
Hadvar nods in a numb sort of shock and leads the way out of the room. Fenrer nods at you as he passes, brandishing an iron sword with an edge sharp enough to slice a table in half. You take up the rear and pray to every deity you can name that nothing manages to sneak up on your little group of almost-warriors.

  
Apparently, the only deities you can name are trickster gods, because even though nothing manages to attack you with any form of stealth, quite a few Stormcloaks swarm you at the very first gate you come across.

  
Hadvar and Fenrer rush into combat with the sort of fervor only Nordic men with a slight death wish have ever really accomplished.

  
You, however, have absolutely no illusions of being a hero today. You push yourself into a corner, hold your shortsword aloft, and attempt to look threatening with mediocre success.

  
You also close your eyes, because you aren't really sure if being threatening is worth it.

  
When the noise stops, you carefully peek out at the carnage.

  
Ruby red blood glistens darkly in the dim torchlight. It spills between the cobblestones in tiny rivers as beautiful as they are grotesque. You catch yourself following the streams of crimson and pull your eyes away and to your companions.

  
Hadvar is examining the sacks that are just visible through the next doorway, obviously hoping that there is something useful waiting for him there. Fenrer, however, is bent over the Stormcloaks and rifling through their few belongings.

  
You lower your sword, mostly in shock, and gape at him.

  
“What are you _doing_?”

  
Fenrer looks up at you, startled, but smoothly recovers himself. He smiles, and his perfect teeth gleam in the torchlight.

  
“If they have supplies, we need them. It isn’t like they’ll get an awful lot of use from potions, now.”

  
He shrugs and turns back to the bodies, and you drop your sword with a gasp.

His eyes...

  
His eyes had flickered in the torchlight.

  
It had been brief, and it certainly might have been a trick of the light, but every primal instinct in your body was screeching at you to run away from this beautiful Nord.

Instead, you freeze, hands covering your mouth to prevent any more sounds of shock.

  
Fenrer turns to you in alarm, and his eyes do it again. Briefly, just for a moment, his eyes had not been blue. They had not even looked human. They were...predatory.

  
Silver.

  
For just an instant, one tiny fraction of time, his eyes had been made of molten silver, hot and heavy enough to pin you into place and burn you alive.

  
_Like a wild animal,_ you think a bit deliriously. _He looks like a wolf, startled by a sudden wash of torchlight. Like one of the big cats of the prairies, prowling under the moon..._

  
As Hadvar approaches, torch held aloft, Fenrer’s eyes flicker once more as he stands. This time you stop the gasp, but you can't stop your fear, even when you try.

  
You feel like a small animal staring down a carnivore with teeth thrice your size. You feel like a rabbit in a trap with no way out.

  
You feel--and it was _ridiculous_ to say, really it was, but you couldn’t help it, not when he was looking at you like _that_ \--you feel…

  
You feel as though the dragon had found its way inside the keep and was now crouched there, in the torchlight, rifling through a dead man’s pockets.


	5. Dungeon Crawl

You told Hadvar and Fenrer that you were only shocked at the sight of the dead. You had never experienced such conflict, and seeing so much death in one day had broken many of your illusions about the cost of a peaceful life.

  
They had accepted it, because of course they had, and led you out of the room with an oath to keep you out of harm’s way.

  
You had followed with wary eyes on Fenrer’s back. You were still trying to decide what exactly the man was because "human" was clearly not an option.

  
A werewolf, maybe? You had heard plenty of tales about the men who could shift their form at will, one of which included the notion that a werewolf always had oddly colored eyes.

  
Maybe he was only partially human? That might explain the reflective nature of the silver. After all, there were quite a few Bosmer whose eyes glowed eerily in the candlelight, and most Khajiit were the same.

  
Something told you that all of these guesses were wrong, though. You couldn’t pin down what exactly it was, but your primal brain had never steered you astray before.

  
In any case, your tiny group of not-quite-warriors was almost constantly under attack, so you moved the idea to the back of your mind.

  
It wasn’t until the kitchens that you had a moment to truly rest, and you took full advantage of it.

  
While Fenrer rifled through the many barrels and sacks, taking all that he could fit into his pack, Hadvar kept guard at the exit with his sword drawn, and you sat at a tiny table, working your way through a loaf of a bread and a jug of water. Seeing the food had inspired an unparalleled appetite that you were doing your very utmost to sate.

  
Of course, that’s when Fenrer decided to stand beside you and drop a fairly full coinpurse onto your lap.

  
“What’s this?” you slurred around a mouthful of bread.

  
“Money,” Fenrer said, laughing at you as though you were the most ridiculous sight of the last age.

  
To be fair, you might well have been; your hair was hanging in tangled knots, your skin was coated in a disturbingly even layer of grime from a multitude of unnamed sources, and the armor Hadvar had given you was just loose enough to make you look bizarrely boxy. Not to mention the blood in your hair and the only of your burns that was quite visible as it marred your cheek.

  
Still, the laughter was unappreciated.

  
“ _Obviously_ , it’s money. Why are you giving me money?”

  
Fenrer only shrugs. “I already have some, and you didn’t have a coinpurse on you. Besides, it’s not exactly useful to the dead.”

  
He walks towards the door and you follow, eyes on his back. You can’t honestly say that you trust him. There’s just something too bizarre about him to trust. But you can admit to appreciating the gesture, and that will have to do.

  
Hadvar leads you into the torture chamber, and you are filled with an appreciation for the headsman. Apparently, there really _are_ things worse than death.

  
The...torturer? Head Pain Dealer? Honestly, you aren’t sure what his official role is, and “Dungeon Master” sounds like an entirely different scenario, but he’s definitely the man in charge. _That Guy_ is leaning over a set of dead Stormcloaks and checking a bit of paper. Orders, maybe.

  
A burly man with an unfortunate case of early baldness is standing in a corner in an Imperial uniform, picking his teeth with one grimy nail.

  
You are immeasurably grateful that you missed the fighting because you just aren’t sure that you could have defended these two and had any amount of dignity remaining.

  
Hadvar directs Fenrer to the cage just as Fenrer is taking a handful of lockpicks from the counter in...another cage? Goodness, this place is bizarre.

  
Hadvar and the unfortunate looking assistant rush ahead to act as lookouts while Fenrer takes the potions and gold from the prisoner’s body. You aren’t quite ready to lie to yourself and say that you would be an effective guard. Instead, you take the knapsack from the table while the torturer fellow screeches about people making off with his belongings.

  
You roll your eyes at that one. Honestly, as if he won’t be dead in a matter of moments, anyway.

  
There’s a ring, an apple, and a jar of mostly used healing poultice in the knapsack. You drop your newly acquired coinpurse inside and decide to count that as well. It isn’t much, but it will be enough for now. It will _have_ to be enough.

  
As your hip twinges in pain, forcing you into a slight limp, you realize that you should absolutely be grateful for the poultice and silently thank the gods.

  
It’s only after you have the knapsack secured that you notice the book. It’s old and bound in a gorgeous blue leather. The symbol on the front is only vaguely familiar, but you eventually place it as the emblem of the Emperor and his line. The Septims, originally, but they had been dead for…

  
The exact number escapes you. You think, _Well, wouldn’t my history tutor be furious with me,_ only to realize that his face, that you are certain was once sharp in your mind, has gone blurry, and his name escapes you. Realizing that you have lost even the tiniest of details almost breaks you, but you have been broken quite enough in recent hours, so you push it aside for Future You to deal with.

  
_But that isn’t even the worst part_ , and, somehow, you are sure of that. _The worst part is that I know that I’m missing things, but I can’t even remember what it is that I don’t know._

  
You aren’t sure why, but you pick up the book and store it in your knapsack as discreetly as possible.

  
“Ready?” Fenrer finally speaks, breaking your thoughts apart.

  
You nod and follow him, silently praying with all of your might that there are as few attackers as possible ahead of you.

 

~~~~~~

  
Your mother once told you that only idiots became priests, and it didn’t matter if they were priests of the Aedra or of the Daedra.

  
“Why?” you had asked because children always wish to know why or how, and because you had been very curious from a very early age.

  
“Because, dear,” your mother had said, smiling as she hoisted you to her hip and handed you a pastry, “the gods are very old and very powerful and very, _very_ bored, and anyone could tell you that a god’s very favorite pastime is to meddle in the lives of those most devout to him.”

  
It is that memory that springs to your mind, unbidden, as you survey the destruction left in the wake of your group of soldiers, as you stare down at the dead man whose chest still sheathes your shortsword.

  
You think you might give up prayer.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I can honestly say that I had absolutely no idea that the Helgen sequence would take this long. Goodness.
> 
> Updates might be a little more spaced out from here on. I'm recovering from an illness and falling behind. I'm still working on new chapters, but the editing is draining. 
> 
> Comments are always welcome!


	6. Of Riverwood

Hadvar and Fenrer kill the bear with a few well-placed arrows. Fenrer takes the beast’s claws with him, which is unfortunate because, having a bit of experience with alchemy, you might have made some use of them. Fenrer then continues through the cave, apparently unbothered by the corpse in Stormcloak blues at his feet.

  
Hadvar, however, stops and crouches beside the dead man. He rolls the body over before he swears violently and wipes a hand down his face, only succeeding in smearing the blood and viscera across his cheek.

  
You slowly approach him and murmur, “Did you know him?”

  
Hadvar laughs, but it is a dry, bitter thing.

  
“Know him? Bah,” he croaks and spits into the dirt. “I grew up with the man. He was my best friend our whole lives. My very best friend, until only a few years ago.”

  
Hadvar then stands and stomps off in the direction of Fenrer, as if disguising his grief in anger will hide the tear tracks on his face.

  
You pity him, but you have enough experience with Nords to know that he will refuse any comfort you try to offer. Instead, you turn your attention to the corpse beside the bear and find yourself gaping once again.

  
Ralof lies dead at your feet, mangled nearly beyond recognition. He is missing an eye, as well as the corresponding half of his face. What is left of his face is frozen in an unending scream of horror, marred only by the tooth marks of the cave bear. There is more damage to the rest of him, but you can’t bring yourself to look overlong.

  
Instead, you gaze out at the men further in the cave.

  
Fenrer had seen this man dead, had not possibly passed by without noticing the corpse of the man who helped the two of you escape and had simply walked on. He had passed this dead man by without even pretending to be impacted.

  
Ralof had been a bastard who had legitimately both threatened and attempted to kill you by throwing you from a great height.

  
Even so, you can’t help but pity him.

  
Everyone deserves to be mourned.

  
Something makes you kneel at the mutilated man’s head. He is wearing an amulet of Talos, which you know to be outlawed, but Nords were ever resistant folk, and Stormcloaks even more so. Gently, you undo the amulet and nestle it in your pack. You hesitate only briefly before doing the same with the decorative beads in his braids.

  
“Ralof of Riverwood,” Hadvar had called him during the roll call.

  
Someone would mourn this man if they knew of his fate.

  
And if no one could muster up the fucking decency, then you would mourn for him.

  
Everyone deserves that much.

  
~~~~~~

  
The three of you emerge from the cave gasping for breath and tremendously sore. You are tempted to jump and shout in relief, but the pain in your hip immediately strikes that idea down.

  
“Wait!” Hadvar shouts, pulling Fenrer to hide behind a rock. In a matter of moments, it becomes clear that he’s attempting to hide from the enormous black dragon that is escaping the ruins of Helgen.

  
You goggle at the men and decide that enough is enough.

  
“Are you fucking _kidding me_!?”

  
Honestly, you weren’t sure that your voice could hit notes that high, but apparently, in your anger, you become an opera singer.

  
Or the Pale Lady.*

  
Hadvar and Fenrer turn to you in mute horror, as if hoping that you aren’t daft enough to make so much noise with a dealer of death directly above you. Unfortunately for them, you absolutely are.

  
“It’s a fucking _dragon_ ,” you howl. “You know--lizards that can _fly_? What good could hiding behind a boulder _possibly_ do?”

  
The men stand, but you aren’t sure if it’s because you convinced them to or because the dragon has now disappeared over the mountains. Frankly, you couldn’t possibly care. You are exhausted, in pain, hungry, lightheaded, and completely done with every tiny bit of bullshit that has come your way in the last few hours.

  
Fenrer approaches you in a way that is almost hesitant.

  
“Are...you alright, my friend?”

  
It takes most of your willpower not to glower at the bastard, but you manage with a sigh.

  
“Yes, yes, fine. Can we just...find a town, or a bed, or literally anything that has poultices for burns and a place for me to safely faint?”

  
Fenrer turns to Hadvar, who nods slowly. Both men seem almost startled that your injuries would be giving you trouble, and both seem a bit apprehensive around you now, anyway.

  
You decide that that is a good thing. You can work with apprehension.

  
“Closest town from here is Riverwood. My uncle's the blacksmith there, and I'm sure he would be willing to help out a couple companions of mine,” Hadvar informs with a smile. Fenrer smiles back with that same easygoing grin that had won you over the first time.

You no longer buy it. There’s something unnatural about that man.

Still, you manage what you hope is a grateful smile at Hadvar and follow along on the road.

By the time Hadvar stops to tell you and Fenrer about the barrow in the distance, you are only barely limping along. Without the nearly constant rush of adrenaline, you are painfully aware of every place that your armor rubs against your hip, every faintly jostling movement, every slight misstep. This is the sort of constant pain that drives men insane, and you wonder if this is a production of Sheogorath or some other, more twisted spirit.

At the Guardian Stones, you stand behind Hadvar as Fenrer carefully examines each one before making an offering to the Warrior Stone. You can’t decide if you should praise the man for giving you a break or curse his name for making you stop when you are so close to Riverwood that you can hear the mill running, but either way, you manage to hate him a little.

You’ve just reached the rather pathetic walls of Riverwood when you fall. Your eyes burn every time you blink, but the rest of you is shaking with the cold. You can’t really tell if it’s a fever or hypothermia, but your vision darkens so quickly that you don’t really have time to care.

From there, you can only catch a handful of images, all of which dance through your mind in slow motion.

Fenrer and Hadvar notice your absence and rush back to your side.

A large, heavily muscled man shouts for a fair Nordic woman to attend to you.

A child is sent away for someone with a name you don’t recognize. A healer, maybe. Gods, you hope it’s a healer.

You’re settled into a bed, warmed by a roaring fire, and stripped out of your armor. Here, you try to protest--you have been stripped of your clothing while unconscious quite enough in the last day or so, _thank you very much_ \--but you are only hushed and encouraged to rest.

Rest does sound ever so lovely about now, so you slip into a dreamless unconsciousness that is less sleeping than it is a fever-induced type of oblivion.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> *The Pale Lady of Morthal is mentioned in the book Lost Legends as, "a ghostly woman who wanders the northern marshes." Some believe that her sobbing wail has the ability to strike dead all who hear it. It's the Skyrim version of a banshee, almost.
> 
> Comments are always welcome and highly appreciated.


	7. The Trouble with Healing

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Caution: not quite graphic but certainly gross depiction of treatment of an infection ahead.

The trouble with healing, in your own humble opinion, is that you are forced to stay very still for very long periods of time, and there are only so many books in the world.

  
When you lament this to Alvor’s daughter, Dorthe, she remarks, “Well, I don’t know about that, but I can give you one of my books.”

  
She then insists on reading her copy of _Kolb & the Dragon_ to you every night before bedtime. She tells you a different version of it each night and, to your surprise and delight, even lets you make the choices a few times.

  
You’re too touched to tell her that you meant history or poetry over a children’s book.

  
Sigrid is a blessing, and you are sure to tell her as much at every opportunity. She brings you meals, helps you to wash and exercise the stiffness from your limbs, and keeps a relaxed conversation going whenever you are well enough to respond. The woman has become one of your closest friends in a matter of days, and you are eternally grateful for her presence.

  
Sigrid also makes sure to pester poor Delphine into helping you whenever she is unable, which is rare enough that you are only on a first-name basis with the innkeeper and you've barely managed that much.

  
Still, if it were not for Delphine you would likely be very dead.

  
When Hadvar and Fenrer had dragged you into Alvor’s house, your hip had already become badly infected, and the burn on your face was in a thoroughly nightmarish state. Apparently, you were in such a bad way that Alvor had dragged Hadvar to the cellar and given him a thorough tongue lashing for allowing one of his companions to reach such a condition.

  
Or, at least, so Sigrid had told you later. You had been in and out of consciousness for nearly a day before you woke to strangers changing the dressings on your wounds.

That was the first time you had seen Delphine. Apparently, she had some fair knowledge of the art of healing, and she was able to pull you from the brink a time or two. She had stopped your infection from reaching your blood just in time to save your life and treated your head wound so that it would have the minimal amount of scarring possible. Delphine had even treated your facial wound, pulling the dead and charred skin away so that your face could properly heal.

  
Well, almost properly. You would always have a very visible scar, even if it faded with time.

  
Delphine, apparently lacking the charming bedside manner of the healers in Cyrodiil’s temples, had left you with a different poultice for each of your injuries and her well wishes. From there, it was up to you and Sigrid.

  
Luckily, it was no great burden to heal from the infection once it had been lanced a few times.

  
(And that had been nightmarish in itself. The viscous stuff that had burst forth from your hip had been a bloody green that was so dark as to be nearly black. The smell alone had almost made you gag, but you didn’t have the chance before the pain finally knocked you out.)

  
When you have finally reached the point where you can stand without reopening your hip or collapsing on the floor, Sigrid gives you a set of clothes and some thick wool undergarments that you are incredibly grateful for.

  
She also tries to talk you out of wandering very far from the house.

  
“Please, my friend, you are in no way properly healed. Why don’t you just wait a while, hmm? Practice your walking inside, first,” Sigrid pleads once again.

  
You don’t know if it’s because she’s a mother and can't help herself or because she honestly thinks you’re incompetent enough to get yourself killed in a town as tiny as Riverwood, but, either way, you don’t care.

  
You sigh.

  
“Sigrid, as much as I appreciate the concern, I will _have_ to leave at some point,” Sigrid looks ready to protest that point, but you hurry through your argument before she can. “I would also like to know what the town that I’ve been in for three days looks like, and I would like to take a bath with real water instead of a sponge and a bucket.”

  
Sigrid sighs and throws her hands up.

  
“Fine, fine,” she says, and you blink in astonishment at the concession. “Go on, explore, get your fill of the place. But be back by dinner.”

  
She wags a stern finger at you, looking every bit the stony grandmother, and you laugh.

  
“Of course I will. Now, wish me luck! Maybe the mill is hiring!” and you close the door with Sigrid’s promises of bodily harm if you even _pretend_ to chop wood following you out into the chilled noontime air.

  
You aren’t an idiot, but it’s funny enough that Sigrid thinks you are so determined to injure yourself that you laugh as you survey the town.

  
Riverwood is a tiny outpost of a town with a handful of houses, the blacksmithy, the mill and an inn. Beyond that, there is a large and bountiful forest, but you aren’t really up to getting lost in the cold. Besides, you had promised Sigrid that you would stay close, and you aren’t a total arse, most days.

  
You wave to Alvor as you descend the stairs, but he’s so caught up in his work that he doesn’t do much but nod back. He’s bent over the anvil, hammering away at the rough shape of what appears to be some sort of weapon, which is a bit bizarre. Sigrid had once told you that the life of a rural blacksmith consisted mainly of forging nails and building supplies with the occasional repair of a traveler’s wagon or a woodcutter’s ax. She had said that, on occasion, one of the locals requested a bundle of arrows for his hunting or a repair of his bow, but that was the most exciting business Alvor had had in years.

  
So it’s a little odd that there is, apparently, someone hanging around long enough to need weaponry, but it isn’t odd enough to distract you from your goal.

  
Your coinpurse jingles slightly as you enter the inn and take a seat at the bar. Hadvar, who keeps swearing up and down that he’ll be leaving for Solitude soon, is sitting at a table across the room and working his way through what must be at least his second bottle of mead. Fenrer is nowhere to be seen, but he had disappeared on your very first night in town, so you aren't really surprised. Delphine is gathering the dirtiest of the dishes, but she doesn’t seem to have noticed you yet. The bard is strumming away on a lute, and singing slightly off-key. There’s a handful of other people scattered throughout the inn, most of whom you are pretty sure you recognize from Sigrid’s gossip, but you are more concerned about the man behind the bar--Orgnar, you think--who has been staring at you since you walked in.

  
“A bottle of wine, please, and a cup,” you say, putting on that bright smile that always managed to get you both into and out of trouble.

  
You really hope the effect isn’t diminished by your scar.

  
Orgnar grunts and gives you your drink, which you quickly pour into the mostly clean cup provided. You pay almost as an afterthought as you sip at the wine, relishing in the familiar warmth it brings to your stomach.

  
Goodness, it feels good to have a somewhat familiar drink in your hands. Mead wasn’t something you knew very well, and ale was a bit of an acquired taste, but wine…

  
You remember sitting in the main room of your house with your older brother and drinking wine while you both read in silence. You remember your mother’s delighted face when she received a bottle of perfectly aged Surilie Brothers Wine for her birthday. You remember your father waxing poetic about the pros and cons of each wonderful bottle as soon as he had gotten even shallowly into his cups. You remember the look on the younger children’s faces--half delight and half mischief, as though they were getting away with something dreadful--every holiday that they were allowed a bit of wine with their meals.

  
The _real_ trouble with healing, as you have been trying to avoid acknowledging, is that no matter how your body heals, your mind has been severely damaged, perhaps beyond repair.

  
You can’t remember your older brother’s name. You don’t remember your mother’s age or even her birthday. You can remember that your father died many years ago, but you just can’t recall how. And, try as you might, you can only recall that your younger siblings were twins who dreamed of being great warriors, leaving the rest of their personalities as blanks in your mind.

  
There are a great many things which you do not remember, but the happiest of what remains involves wine in some way, so you will grasp what little you can.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Uploaded earlier than planned because I'm ahead on chapters and I want to get this thing moving.
> 
> Comments, concerns, criticisms? 
> 
> All are welcome and appreciated.


	8. The Nord, the Elf, and the Merchant

You aren’t allowed to mope alone in the inn for very long. You’ve only been nursing your wine for a few wonderful minutes before the bard walks up to you and introduces himself as Sven.

  
Sven is your average Nord in all of three ways: he is tall, he is moderately handsome, and he is obviously obsessed with getting his way. That said, he is a rather charming fellow, which is unsurprising considering his line of work, and you find yourself sharing drinks with him and chatting amiably about life in Riverwood and the general state of the world today.

  
Somewhere along the line, you discover that Sven is sweet on a local girl who is, rather unfortunately, being pursued by another man.

  
“Why dontcha just...leave her be? Ya know? Let her...figure her shit out, right? That makes sense,” you slur a bit drunkenly.

  
It has been quite some time since you’ve sat down for a drink, and spending a few hours consuming nothing but alcohol was a bad way to go about reintroducing yourself to the practice.

  
“Hah! I would at that, but the girl’s obviously got no sense,” Sven booms, being the only one of you thinking clearly enough to speak similarly. He goes on to mumble, “Damn elves, coming here to ruin our lives. All they’re good for…”

  
That perks you right up, and you blink through the alcohol-induced haze to goggle at Sven.

  
“Pardon?”

  
Sven nods sagely, as though he is imparting some great and ancient wisdom unto you.

  
“S’true,” and now he’s slurring a bit, “All they do is lie and steal and take stuff. Like Camilla…”

  
You grit your teeth and stare into your cup. It seems as though every potential friend you make these days turns out to be a royal bastard, and, quite frankly, you are sick to death of it.

  
Part of your inner dialogue escapes you in the words, “Then why don’t you do something about it?”

  
Sven, obviously thinking you were addressing him, grins at you.

  
“I’m so glad you asked,” he coos triumphantly as he hands you a note.

  
You open it and immediately regret the decision. You have to struggle to not glare daggers at Sven, and it is doubly challenging not to find some creative way to destroy this man. Delphine would never forgive you for getting blood all over her floor, you’re sure of it.

  
“See? All you haveta do is take that to Camilla.”

  
“...And?”

  
Sven snorts at you. “Tell her it’s from Faendal. Obviously.”

  
Oh, you _hate_ this guy. Still, you grin at him.

  
“You gonna pay me since I’m running errands and such?” Really, it's rather lucky that Sven is absolutely smashed since otherwise, the venom in your voice might just be enough for you to get yourself punched.

  
It takes him a moment to respond, but when he does, it’s with a fistful of golden coins. You stare down at the septims and grin around the words, “Thank you for your custom.”

  
Sven snorts out a laugh and waves you off, still smiling at you in an altogether friendly manner.

  
“Off with you. And tell me what she says, yeah?”

  
You stand--a bit unsteadily, if we’re being honest--and head out the door, grinning all the way.

  
It’s a shaky, stumbling sort of journey from the inn to the Riverwood Trader, but the cold air manages to both soothe your temper and gift you with a touch of sobriety.

  
Dimly, you realize that you were supposed to join Sigrid and her family for dinner again, but you can’t worry about that now. Right now, you have a mission--a quest, if you will.

  
_I absolutely will_ , you decide. _Sounds a lot better than “drunkenly strolling through the freezing night,” at any rate._

  
The Riverwood Trader is obviously in the process of shutting down for the night when you walk in. The man behind the counter grumbles rudely when you approach, but the woman, Camilla, you suppose, smiles at you a bit tiredly.

  
“Hello there, and welcome to--”

  
“You’re Camilla.”

  
You would try to be nicer, but you are not, in any way, in the headspace for it.

  
“Um. Yes. Why? Did you need something?”

  
You hand her the letter and proclaim, “Sven is a quivering pile of goat shit, and here is the proof.”

  
Camilla takes the note as if you were attempting to hand her an angered imp, but she does open it and read it.

  
Watching her eyes, you can see the exact moment that she realizes what the note says.

  
“He… Why would he do this? I thought…”

  
_Now_ you feel like a bastard, but you fight it off. Sven is a monster that clearly doesn’t deserve such a kind-hearted, soft-spoken woman. Camilla had every right to know, even if she is starting to cry and crumpling up the note and--

  
You’re an awful person.

  
You ease Camilla into a nearby chair and kneel in front of her, gently taking the note from her hands and setting it on the table. You pour a cup of the nearby wine and put it in her hands. The man behind the counter--Lucan, you suppose, her brother--gives her a handkerchief as he picks up the note. After a few minutes, he tosses it to the counter, disgusted.

  
You completely understand the sentiment.

  
After a few moments, Camilla has calmed herself and downed nearly four cups of wine in the process. You try to apologize, but she only shakes her head sadly.

  
“No, no. Thank you for telling me. I would much rather know this than pledge myself to...that,” she sneers at the paper. Then, softly, she adds, “You know, you should really talk to Faendal, too. He doesn’t have much, but he has more than I do, and he would almost certainly repay this kindness.”

  
You beam at her.

  
“There’s no need at all for that. I got paid for my services as a courier before I even delivered the note.”

  
You wink at her, and Camilla laughs delightedly, and, suddenly, you feel like a bit of a hero.

  
~~~~~~

  
When you stumble back into Alvor’s house, Sigrid leaps upon you with a cry of relief and muffled exclamations about her joy at your wellbeing. The shouts quickly turn to threats that grow in both profanity and measure of bodily harm until you grin and say, “Oh hush, now. I have a perfectly good explanation for why I’m late. And you might want to sit down. This is a good one.”

  
~~~~~~

  
The next morning, Faendal comes calling at Alvor’s house. He has brought you a gift of gold and the promise of his aid if you ever find yourself in any sort of need whatsoever.

  
You tell him that you don’t need much, but you could always use another friend, and his wide, genuine smile is enough to make all the shit you’ve been through in recent days worth it.

  
Well.

  
Almost.


	9. Scar Tissue

The day that Faendal introduces himself at Alvor’s house is your fourth day in Riverwood. By now, you are healed enough that Sigrid trusts you to leave the house on your own, but you know that if she were not a hardy Nord she would more than likely have quite different opinions on the matter.

 

  
You consider yourself lucky that she doesn’t hover; being constantly indoors is more draining on you than the actual wounds, now.

  
By noon on this fourth day, the entire village is bustling and buzzing with the news of what Sven attempted and the story of how you courageously refused to be part of such a devious plot. A handful of people whisper that you were cunning enough to talk the man into actually paying you for the act, but few people put much stock into the idea.  
Sigrid tells you that the people of Riverwood are mostly just grateful to have fresh news to gossip about. There isn’t much else to occupy the time in such a tiny village, and the idea of dragons returning was dampening everyone’s spirits.

  
It is on this fourth day that you see your face for the first time since you were injured.

  
You are sitting just slightly downstream of Riverwood with a basket of dirty laundry that you had insisted on helping with at your side. Sigrid has just run off to help Dorthe with something, and you are left alone. You lean over a bit too far to catch a blouse that is trying to float away and make the mistake of looking down.

  
You freeze, wet clothes dampening your trousers, and stare at an unfamiliar face.

  
The person in the river looks like you, and they are certainly showing enough shock to mimic you perfectly, but there is a wide mark running from their cheekbone to their jaw on the left side of their face.

  
It is not a pretty mark. This is not the scar a brawler receives in the Arena, all thin and white from the edge of a desperate man’s dagger. This is not the scar a warrior receives on the battlefield, jagged and raised but worn proudly as a symbol of victory against foes. This is not even the sort of dignified scarring that even the most domestic of Imperial housewives gains during pregnancy when the skin is stretched taut at the belly.

  
This is the mark left by Dragonfire, and it is terrible to behold.

  
The skin is not raised but sunken, and it is not even uniform in that. The unsunken fragments of your flesh exist in bands of tissue stretched across your skin, like rope bridges over countless caverns, and staring at them overlong is almost hypnotic, drawing you deeper and deeper into some nameless dark, some awful oblivion wherein innocent people are permanently marred for the crime of existing.

  
If ever it could be said that you were beautiful, that is true no longer.

  
Some awful nameless fear has kept you from seeking out a reflective surface or even touching your face until now. You had seen the markings on your hip and thought them frightful, and it had been enough to deter your curiosity.

  
On some level, you had been afraid that acknowledging the damage would lock the events that caused it into place. In some childish corner of your mind, you had hoped that ignoring the effect would negate the cause, that you could escape the nightmare of Helgen by simply pretending that it had not existed. You would have given anything to no longer dream of smoke, to forget the smell of burning human flesh, to no longer flinch at the happy shrieks of playing children because it reminds you of the screams of the dying and the damned. You would have given anything, and if that meant never looking upon your own face, then it was an easy price to pay.

  
Now, as you stare at the figure in the water, you do not wail. You do not scream in fright or collapse into sobs or curse the gods for their cruelty as you once feared that you might.

  
You simply raise your hand and trace the lines of the scar, marveling at the lack of sensation.

  
You do not scream or swear or sob.

  
You turn away from the river and work on the laundry.

  
Later, Sigrid will ask why you are so quiet today, and you will laugh and nudge her and say, “Oh, I’m just tired, I guess,” and wear a smile like armor.

  
~~~~~~

  
Sometime after noon, Faendal knocks on Alvor’s door and invites you out for lunch.

  
“It’s the least I can do,” he says, wearing a smile that makes you understand why Camilla likes him so much. “Besides, you did promise to be my friend, and I’ve come to collect.”

  
It’s the first time you’ve given a genuine laugh since seeing your face reflected in the water. You decide that an accomplishment like that deserves reward and follow him out.

  
It’s to your surprise when Faendal allows you into his home rather than leading you into the inn. Apparently, he has some small talent for cooking, and he uses it to impress.

  
The conversation is easy and open with Faendal, and as you sit around the fire, relaxing with a cup of delightful Tamika’s West Weald, you find yourself revealing more than you intended. When Faendal asks where you grew up, hoping that will help him to place your accent, you blurt out, “I don’t know either!” and laugh right until he asks what you mean.

  
“Well,” you try to recover, but only manage to stammer, “I… Look, you know that I was at Helgen, right?”

  
A shadow falls across Faendal’s face at the mention of the ruined city, but he nods and waits for you to gather your thoughts.

  
“I… Well, I wasn’t a soldier, like Hadvar. I was taken into custody, on the border,” here you pause, because these memories are fuzzy, and try to collect yourself. You succeed only in making the most dreadful concentration face that Faendal has ever seen.

  
“My family and I, we were crossing into Skyrim. But I...can’t remember why. We were going through the Pale Pass, and--ha!--and my older brother was harassing the twins, saying that ogres lived nearby, and we should just leave them there as a distraction! ‘Cross the border while they’re occupied by you,’ that sort of thing. And Mother was rolling her eyes, and our uncle was fighting down laughter,” you had started to smile here, but now it falls away, “...and then there were soldiers in blue and brown. And… I can’t remember why, but one of the Imperials saw us and…”

  
You pause to clear your throat and wipe your eyes.

  
“It’s all a haze from there. I remember getting hit on the head and… But my family is gone, apparently,” you croak, staring into the fire and remembering the sympathy on Fenrer’s face, the sadness for the prisoner without a memory.

  
It hadn’t quite hit you until now that you are utterly alone. The only people in the world who might’ve been able to tell you where you came from, why you came here, or any of the other thousand things you can’t recall, are gone. They are dead, rotting somewhere between here and Cyrodiil, and you can’t even remember enough about _them_ to mourn properly.

  
You don’t realize that you’re crying until Faendal has scooped you into his arms and started shushing you like a child. He mumbles anything that might soothe you, and the simple act of kindness only provokes more tears.

  
It takes you much longer than you would like for you to regain control of yourself, but when you do, you thank him and try to apologize.

  
“No, don’t be sorry,” he interrupts. “You have every right to grieve, and you will never have to be sorry for that. Oh, damn the fools that started this war, and those that fight it!”

  
After a countless age of quiet comforting, Faendal gently pats your back.

  
“I have to get back to the mill now,” he mumbles apologetically, “but I can walk you back to Alvor’s if you’d like.”

  
You nod and thank him quietly as you follow him back through town, pushing your memories and the despair accompanying them to the background of your mind. For now, they can be ignored fairly easily.

  
You try to avoid looking overly tearful as you walk.

  
When you reach the small wooden bridge that leads to the mill, you pause and stare at the workers thoughtfully.

  
“You know,” you begin slowly, “I think I’ve met just about everyone here, but I can’t really recall those two.”

  
The worry that you are now having trouble remembering recent things starts to eat away at you, but it is quickly soothed by Faendal humming and saying, “That would be Gerdur and Hod. They own the mill, and they are always working, so it wouldn’t surprise me if you hadn’t spent a great amount of time talking to them.”

  
While that’s a relief, you can’t help but feel as if you are missing something obvious.

  
“Goodness, but she does look familiar. Does she have any relatives in Cyrodiil? Maybe as guardsmen or some sort of politicians for the Empire?”

  
Faendal throws his head back and laughs at that one.

  
“Hah! Not any that she’d claim! No, that whole family is made up of rebels. Brother ran off and became a Stormcloak, I think.”

  
A cold sweep of dread rolls down your spine.

  
“A brother?” you ask meekly, hoping you are wrong while knowing that you are right. “What was the name of this brother?”

  
“Um,” Faendal hums thoughtfully, “I don’t really know. Something particularly Nordic, I remember that much. I think… Oh, no, I’m a dunce. It was _Ralof._ Gerdur once told me she called him ‘hayloft’ when they were children whenever she wanted to make him angry, which was often, probably. Hah. Funny, how memories work.”

  
Faendal laughs. You do not.

  
You are frozen, wholly unable to speak or to move except to clutch at your coinpurse, where a worn amulet and a handful of beads wait for delivery.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Comments feed the muse.
> 
> Tell me what you hated and/or liked so I can know what I'm doing wrong and/or right and adjust accordingly.


	10. Burdens

That night at dinner, you can’t focus on anything. Conversation passes you by and, while you are sure to compliment Sigrid on the stew she worked so hard on, food appears bland and tasteless.

  
Sigrid notices because Sigrid always notices when something bothers people she cares about and stops you as you go to wash dishes.

  
“My friend, you appear...unwell. Are you feeling alright?”

  
There is no one else in the cellar just now, and Sigrid is staring at you with the kindest eyes you have ever had look your way, and there are only silence and a tightness in your chest to keep you from telling her whatever she might wish to know.

  
Sigrid sets a gentle hand on your shoulder, and you collapse.

  
You fall into a seat and sob like a child.

  
You tell her about the awful tense knot in your gut that comes with knowing you are about to die. You tell her, in shaky words, about the thief who only wanted to live and tried to escape only moments before he would’ve had the opportunity. You tell her about seeing the dragon for the first time and then about feeling Dragonfire, hot as any forge, licking against your flesh. You tell her about the Stormcloak attacks that just never seemed to end and then sob your way through the first time you killed a man, how you used the very sword at your hip, and the awful way that his eyes still haunted you some nights. Most nights.

  
You tell her about the gaps in your memory, like the holes in a soft cheese. You tell her about the things that you know you should remember and the things that you are not even sure you ever had memories of. You tell her everything you _can_ remember because maybe if Sigrid can remember it for you then maybe it won’t be such an awful weight to carry around. You tell her about your brother’s eyes and your mother’s smile and your father’s job. Perhaps most importantly, you try to impart the _awareness_ of the awful gaping pit in your mind and the awful way that knowing it exists twists you into a deep-seated distrust of everything and everyone, including yourself, because that is surely the worst part.

  
Then you tell her about the way Fenrer’s eyes had flickered in the dim light because you can’t stop yourself and because you were starting to think that you were crazy. You tell her about the coldness hiding under that warm exterior and the way his eyes glinted at the mere mention of gold. You tell her about how very little he cared about Ralof, and then you cry pitifully as you describe the grisly scene you found Ralof in.

  
“Ralof was there, dead on the ground, and Fenrer...stepped over him. Just completely ignored the man who had been the first to offer any help at all,” you stutter out. The sight of Fenrer totally dismissing a dead man who he had known chilled you even now.

  
Sigrid is quiet, and for once, you have no idea what she’s thinking.

  
“And now… Now, I know where his family is. I can do something about it, but…”

  
“You’re afraid,” Sigrid whispers, but the words are sympathetic and soft rather than the harsh judgment that some part of you had expected.

  
You stare at her in a mix of awe and fear as she continues, “You’re afraid because that’s what you promised yourself you would do, but you don’t know how they’ll react. And…”

  
Then, because you just aren’t sure that you can handle anyone else uttering the words before you can, you whisper, “And I’m terrified that I won’t have anything else, once I do the only thing I know for certain I’m capable of.”

  
The words hang heavily in the sudden silence of the room, but you feel a strange wash of relief once you admit to the truth of them.

  
You are reminded every day just how little you have, how little you remember, and how little you are truly capable of. You know quite a bit about the art of healing, and you remember the basics of alchemy, but you have no knowledge of swordsmanship or marksmanship.

  
In Cyrodiil, you would be perfectly capable of finding a job, finding a home, and caring for yourself, but this is not Cyrodiil. Here, you must be able to survive the day-to-day struggles that come with living in a frozen world full to bursting with creatures that enjoy preying on the weak. In fact, Skyrim might as well be another world entirely. The weak have no place here, and the natives of this harsh land are sure to remind you of that fact however possible, be it subtly offering advice for a task even the slowest of toddlers must learn here or directly insulting your capability of survival.

  
Your greatest fear is that you are The Weak.

  
Sigrid coos at you and scoops you into a hug.

  
“Oh, it’ll be okay,” she mumbles without really convincing you. “You are always welcome here. We’ll set you up a room, and Alvor can teach you to smith, and you won’t have to worry about a thing.”

  
It is the realization that Sigrid is readily accepting your uselessness rather than reassuring you of your great value that finally provokes a laugh. It’s a bitter, sad laugh, but it’s enough to have you flinging your arms around her.

  
So the two of you sit there, laughing and crying in equal measure until the moon rises high above the village and the stress of the day fades into background noise.

  
~~~~~~

  
The sun has only barely risen on your fifth day in Riverwood when Hadvar opens the door to Fenrer’s heart-stopping grin.

  
Hadvar laughs and greets him and offers him a bed even though he knows that you are occupying the only spare bed in the whole of the house.

  
Fenrer only shakes his head and says, “No, no, but thank you, old friend. I’m actually spending the night at the inn, and in the morning, I have a bit of business with old Lucan at the Riverwood Trader. Then I’m off to Whiterun.”

  
He pauses to nod at Alvor, and the old blacksmith raises his mug in a salute. Then Fenrer calls your name, and your breath catches in your throat.

  
“How have you been, friend?”

  
You could almost believe that he meant the warm grin accompanying his words, but you have learned to recognize the shine in his eyes that means he is thinking of himself, so you hesitate before answering with a cautious smile.

  
You tell Fenrer about your troubles with your health and your accomplishments with the same. You tell him about your budding friendships with Faendal and Camilla and, yes, even small Dorthe, who beams when you mention her. You tell him all about your growing desire to explore the rest of this small country because he asks and because the more you speak the more you realize the truth of it.

  
You do not mention Ralof or the fact that you have located his family. You figure that, even if some distant part of Fenrer’s mind could bother to care, he doesn’t really have the right to know.

  
The visit ends with Fenrer promising Alvor that he will stop by for dinner and a dreadful chill creeping down your spine at the thought.


	11. Visits

You make a visit to the Riverwood Trader before you do anything else that day.

  
It is nearing lunchtime, but Lucan is in a better mood than you’ve ever seen him. There is a golden ornament, shaped like the claw of some great beast, atop the counter. When you mention never having seen it before, Lucan spins into some great tale about its theft and subsequent return to him. After he is sure that you know everything you could possibly want to know about the claw, and more besides, he dives into a fantastic tale extolling the virtues of Fenrer and his battle prowess. When the story threatens to spiral into a wholly different tale about the wonders Fenrer claims to have seen in Bleak Falls Barrow and their possible worth, you politely interrupt to tell him that, really, Sigrid does need the venison she sent you after, and make your escape.

  
Sigrid did not speak much while Fenrer was present, but when you ask about it, she only shakes her head a bit.

  
“I don’t really know,” she mumbles, “but since you mentioned it, I can’t help but notice how very oddly he moves. I mean, I am used to seeing Faendal walk similarly, all smooth movements and joints at bizarre angles, but he’s an elf. That’s just how they are, and… Well, it just isn’t something you expect from a man.”

  
She refuses to speak on the matter any more.

  
With nothing else to do and the healthy fear that Dorthe will try to read her books to you again if you stick around the house, you take to wandering along the borders of the town. Because you promised Sigrid that until she was sure of your health you would stay nearby, you do not amble in the direction of Helgen as you have been feeling the mounting urge to do in these last few days. You do not try to get to Falkreath or stroll through the plains until you find Whiterun. You stay close to Riverwood, just as you promised.

  
Well, technically, you cross the bridge and walk along the opposite side of the river, but you know that that must be close enough to count.

  
The area is beautiful in the way that unexplored or unsettled land always seems to be. This place belongs solely to nature, and that simple fact is reinforced by everything from the smell of the air to the color of the soil. It almost reminds you of something--perhaps a fragment of your childhood--but trying to conjure the images hovering at the back of your mind only gives you a headache.

  
Sometime during your wandering, you stumble across a small shack. Really, “small” might be a bit of a misnomer--the thing is tiny and practically unlivable. There are holes in the walls and ceiling, but it seems, overall, in decent shape, if in need of a few repairs. Some distance behind the building, there is a familiar looking stack of stones.

  
A moment of consideration allows you to remind yourself that, in Skyrim, graves tend to be piled with stone to prevent animals from…

  
The thought is a bit grisly if you are being honest with yourself.

  
You can’t help but wonder who died here and whether or not they died alone. It seems an awful shame to live this far away from a city or any large segment of civilization only to spend your last moments with no one around to care for you.

  
Of course, the real question would be, “Who buried that person?”

  
Unfortunately, just as you realize that the voice booms from behind you, “And what do you think you’re doing here?”

  
You gasp and turn to face Fenrer with the harshest glare you can summon.

  
“Are you trying to scare me out of my skin?”

  
It comes out at a bit of a higher pitch than you intended, and it is in no way frightening, but you glare ferociously to make up for it.

  
Fenrer raises one of his perfect brows at you before turning back to the hut, clearly unimpressed with your display.

  
“I wasn’t, actually,” he says coolly. “I was just coming out here to think. I do that sometimes. It’s a nice little spot.”

  
“So… Do you know what happened to them?” You nod toward the grave as you speak.

  
Something flashes across Fenrer’s face, but before you can decipher it, it melts away into pity--or, at least, something close enough to almost fool you.

  
“Ah, yes,” he says, voice velvety smooth and laden with a grief you don’t fully believe, “Anise. This cabin was once the property of an elderly woman who lived, as far as I can tell, completely alone. I found this cabin and she was...dead, inside. I couldn’t just leave her there. It would’ve been wrong. Somehow, I think you understand that.”

  
Fenrer turns to you, then, with a fire like anger simmering behind his baby blues, as though he knows about the way you’ve been working up the courage to speak with Gerdur and doesn’t approve. He says nothing, though, and the only tell is the brightness in his eyes and the barely-there strain to his smile.

  
You straighten up. Sure, it’s probably all in your head, but that’s no reason to be intimidated by a man who can’t even tell a proper lie.

  
He knew the woman’s name, and it is _that_ that you latch onto, using it as fuel for the ever-growing fire of distrust that threatens to consume you whole whenever you look at this man.

  
“Of course,” you say, feeling braver than you have in a week and holding his gaze, “anyone with honor understands that even the dead deserve respect. I think only a callous fool would be able to claim otherwise.”

  
Even if the statement isn’t completely true to your actual opinion, it gets that fire in Fenrer’s eyes to burn a bit brighter, and that is more than enough to excuse it.

  
He nods at you, more acknowledgment than he probably meant to show, and quickly moves on.

  
“What’s that you’ve got there?”

  
It takes you a minute to realize that he doesn’t mean your knapsack or the lunch within it but your book.

  
The book you picked up in the dungeons of Helgen is tucked under your arm, waiting for you to find a spot to sit and pour through it as you’ve been wanting to do for ages now. You have been able to read through it briefly in the past few days, but something in this tome suggested that you needed to thoroughly examine it somewhere a bit more private than Sigrid’s guest bed. You can’t for the life of you decide why you feel the need for privacy, but you tuck the book a bit more securely under your arm when Fenrer’s gaze turns to it and smile as sweetly as you can.

  
“Just a bit of light reading,” you say, sure to keep your voice as steady as your smile.

  
Fenrer hums softly before smiling again, all easy charm and brilliantly white teeth, and says, “Well, I’ll let you have a bit of privacy. This is a great place to relax, as long as you find the river relaxing rather than… Well, it bothers some people.”

  
Your smile twitches, because you are sure that was going to be a threat, but you only reply, “No, I find it rather relaxing, actually.”

  
“Good. That’s good, then,” Fenrer smiles, and you can almost believe him. “I guess I’ll see you at dinner, then?”

  
You don’t know why, but you turn to watch him as he starts back toward Riverwood and clear your throat.

  
“Actually,” you speak slowly, having no idea what you are going to say right now, “I won’t be there for dinner. I’ve already got plans with Faendal and Camilla.”

  
It isn’t true, you just made it up on the spot, and you think Fenrer must know that from the way a grin slowly crawls across his face, but you can’t backtrack now, so you only smile.

  
“Well,” he says, and you’ve done it now, haven’t you? “I’ll just see you later, I suppose.”

  
Finally, Fenrer turns and walks away, and you are left to deal with the sudden rush of dread weighing you down and threatening to crush you entirely.

  
Oh Divines, Faendal is going to kill you.

  
~~~~~~

  
“You told him what?”

  
Faendal isn’t quite yelling, but he isn’t happy with you.

  
“Look, I know it was stupid, and I know I should have done a bit more thinking, but I just need you to cover for me if he comes around asking questions.”

  
Faendal gives one of those long-suffering sighs that tells you he is upset with you.

  
The people of Skyrim do not often lead long lives, and personal relationships are forged as quickly as these people forge weapons.

  
(Quickly. Weapons are forged very, _very_ quickly here.)

  
Faendal was not born in this land, but he has adopted the customs well enough. That is why you have been able to earn a spot very near and dear to his heart in only a few short days.

  
That near and dear spot is what keeps him from glaring as you smile sheepishly.

  
“You realize,” the mer begins, doing his very best to speak calmly, “that I was supposed to eat dinner with Camilla tonight. _Alone._ ”

  
“Yes! Yes, Faendal, I do know that,” _now_ , but you won’t tell him that. “All I’m asking is for you to tell Fenrer, _if_ he asks, that I was with you two all throughout dinner. I am  _actually_ going to go picnic across the river. You don't have to worry about me. I just need an excuse! That’s all! He probably won’t even ask.”

  
Faendal stares at you for a long hard minute before sighing.

  
“Fine! Fine, alright, let Sigrid know that you’ll be here tonight.”

  
“Great! I-- ...What?” He sounded serious.

  
Faendal turns away from you and to his cabinets, rummaging through them for ingredients and trying to keep the affection out of his voice.

  
“I can’t let my best friend starve out in the cold, now, can I? But _you’re_ going to explain this to Camilla!”

  
You push the small smile off of your face as you step forward to help prepare dinner.

  
A lot can be said about the inhabitants of Skyrim, and not all of it is pleasant, but you have learned that they make the most steadfast friends in all of Tamriel.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Here's the deal: I've been struggling with a few personal issues and the depression that accompanied them. This has made it really hard for me to find a reason to write, but I'm handling it. 
> 
> This fic will continue for as long as I can find inspiration and craft a cohesive story from it. This thing will get an ending, I promise, but it might take a bit of time.
> 
> I also realized that this work is turning into A Thing, so I have created a general outline. Before, I was just writing whatever I thought sounded good, but I hope to introduce something similar to an actual plot fairly soon. It won't be anything groundbreaking or mesmerizing, but I hope to make it entertaining.
> 
> On a similar note, is there anything you would like to see happen in this story? How do you think this work should progress? Do you have any hopes for the Reader character or their development?
> 
> Don't be shy! Please let me know. I can't promise that I will incorporate everything, but I can promise that I will try. After all, I am writing about you! (Sort of...)
> 
> I would also like to thank my commenters. Reading your kind words helped me convince myself that, yes, this story is worth the effort. You guys are awesome!
> 
>  
> 
> TL;DR: I'm alive. I am still writing. Leave a comment, please, they really do help, you have no idea.
> 
>  
> 
> TL;DR of the TL;DR: Look, more Skyrim-You!!


	12. The Dream

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Filler chapter while I work out how to progress from here.

Sigrid does not ask many questions when you return from dinner with Faendal and Camilla. She only wishes to know if you are alright, both mentally and physically, and you are.

  
“I really am fine, Sigrid. Just...tired, I guess,” you insist when she begins to follow you into your sleeping space in the cellar.

  
The smile you flash at her on your way to your bed is strained, but it is, technically, true.

  
You are perfectly healthy. There is no reason for you to be otherwise, so you know that you must be hale and whole. There is nothing wrong with you, and you have enough training in the arts of healing that you would absolutely know if the situation were otherwise.

  
Yet something keeps you awake this night. You can not sleep, no matter how you toss and turn.

  
You try to clear your mind, but you only succeed in conjuring the image of the black dragon as it exhaled fire onto your face, and that is the least relaxing memory in your mind. You try reading to tire yourself out. You try drinking warmed milk. You even try counting imaginary sheep while staring numbly at the leaping flames that warm the house, but you only seem to focus more intently.

  
Eventually, you give up on sleep.

  
With a bottle of cheap wine in one hand and _The Book of the Dragonborn_ in the other, you set out on a mad journey through Riverwood.

  
(Actually, you pace around the blacksmithy a few times in an effort to tire yourself out before you _really_ give up and take a seat on the side of the bridge out of town, but the former sounds so much more daring.)

  
You drink half of the bottle before you even open the book.

  
Your copy of _The Book of the Dragonborn_ has writing of your own hand scattered all throughout the pages. Notes on important asides and repeated phrases echo the author’s words in an almost annoying pattern, simplifying the work so that even your inebriated brain can absorb the gist of the tome and obsess over it.

  
_This is not healthy_ , but you knew that already, and the thought does not impede you in the slightest.

  
You skim through the bits about the pact between Alessia and Akatosh and the ridiculously detailed genealogy of the Septim Dynasty and every confirmed Dragonborn that they ever produced. You knew that already, like every other child of Cyrodiil. The Septims, though forgotten over the years, were fondly remembered in the Imperial City, and you had spent much of your life only a brisk walk outside of the capital in a small town called Aleswell.

  
No, you are not obsessing over this book for the history lesson. You are drawn, as always, to the verse at the very end.

  
**_When misrule takes its place at the eight corners of the world_ **  
**_When the Brass Tower walks and Time is reshaped_ **  
**_When the thrice-blessed fail and the Red Tower trembles_ **  
**_When the Dragonborn Ruler loses his throne, and the White Tower falls_ **  
**_When the Snow Tower lies sundered, kingless, bleeding_ **  
**_The World Eater wakes, and the Wheel turns upon the Last Dragonborn._ **

  
There must be something there, but you are blind to it. Long-forgotten history lessons whimper and whine at the back of your mind, promising answers, but even if you might have recalled them before Helgen, there was little, if any, hope of doing so now.

  
In a moment of drunken anger and frustration, you pull your arm back to hurl the blasted book into the river, hoping to watch it sail over the rushing waterfall with some measure of satisfaction.

  
Instead, you drop the book onto the cobblestones of the bridge behind you and sob brokenly into your hands.

  
There is something terribly wrong with you beyond your physical afflictions and the holes in your memory, but you are not sure what it is.

  
You drink the rest of the wine through your haze of self-pity and frustration and turn to spread along the edge of the wall where you sit. You lie there, one foot dangling almost to the water, and stare at the stars for an untraceable amount of time. It may be only seconds, or it may be hours, and you have no real way of knowing, but eventually, you begin to sober up.

  
The sobriety is frustrating because you want nothing more than to drink yourself into oblivion--or Oblivion, you aren’t picky--and wait for whatever form of death might be kind enough to find you on the bridge only a few steps from Riverwood. You are, however, in no shape to actually get more alcohol, so you close your eyes and watch the afterimages of the stars dance across your eyelids.

  
Slowly, achingly slowly, the afterimages fade into a picture that is somehow both familiar and incredibly distant, as though you are watching a play written many centuries ago.

  
~~~~~~

  
_You are small, a child, and you are lying beneath the stars with a man ten years your senior._

  
_The man is your older brother, and he is smiling at the two moons with the same grin that greets you every morning in the mirror: your father’s grin, a grin that could start a war or end it just as quickly, a grin that could have wooed royalty._

  
_(If family legends were to be believed, that grin_ did _woo royalty, but that was centuries in the past if it happened at all, and you are a child who does not have the patience to think on such things.)_

  
_“Well,” you say, knowing that you are saying his name without knowing what you are saying, “why did you bring me all the way out here?”_

  
_He turns and smiles at you, and you smile back, powerless to stop it. After all, a grin like that deserves to be met with the same, and no one ever seemed capable of resisting once they were exposed to it._

  
_“Patience,” he says with a voice like the gentle roar of a waterfall. “Have patience, little one, and you’ll understand.”_

  
_You don’t believe him, not completely. After all, your brother was a renowned troublemaker, and he had only gotten worse after the development of his magic. It would not surprise you in the slightest if he were only dragging you about in an effort to ruin your new clothes and cause your mother to fuss at you for the next several weeks. Truly, that would be just like him._

  
_Yet something about his tone demands that you obey, so you lie back and stare at the stars, waiting for some unnamed event to mystify you._

  
_You fall asleep._

  
_Sometime later, you blearily wake to your brother’s voice rumbling around the syllables of your name._

  
_You are frustrated and tired and convinced that he could have carried you back home when he realized that his prank did not work, but all of your protests die away when you open your eyes._

  
_Above you, colors dance across the starry sky. To your child’s mind, they look like magic, and you bask in the beauty of the sight, breathless, for what must be hours but feels like only seconds._

  
_Blues and greens and ambers and reds waver over the sky for one instantaneous eternity before blinking out like a torchbug in the summer, somehow still there even though you can not be sure if they were ever really there at all._

  
_You turn to your brother in muted surprise only to see that his gaze is on you rather than the sky._

  
_“That’s what you needed to see,” he whispers as if afraid to break whatever wonderful spell had overcome the two of you. “It only comes this far south a few nights out of the year, and you needed to see it.”_

  
_“Why?” you mumble breathlessly because you can think of no other response._

  
_Your brother smiles again, but this time it is not the heartstopping grin you both inherited. This time it is a soft genuine thing, and it strikes you--the_ real _you, ten years in the future, the You that is asleep on a cold bridge on the outskirts of a town many, many miles from your tiny village of Aleswell--it strikes you that that may have been the last time he really smiled before he left for the Arcane University and learned that smiles were just another of the many tools in the arsenal of the Master Mage._

  
_Later, he would change, but right now, he was still your brother, and he still wished to nurture that burning curiosity that had never really been quenched._

  
_“Because,” he answers, “There are things in this world that are out of our control, things that are more beautiful than anything we could ever hope to create, and things that are wildly and unpredictably dangerous._

  
_“You are very young, and you have never had to experience the danger of the world. I pray that you never do. But you should know that when everything seems designed to bring you down, when the whole world seems prepared and anxious to see you fall, when you are at your very lowest and those unpredictable, dangerous things are after you--when that moment comes, remember that there is still beauty to be found if you are willing to look for it.”_

~~~~~~

  
You wake to colors in the sky, brighter and more active than they were on that night so many years ago.

  
You stare, the whole of your body tense and anxious, half-expecting your brother to step into your field of vision and bring you into a much-needed hug or tell you all of the things that you have forgotten.

  
But your brother does not move from the place where his body lies, and you are left there, staring at the beauty of a northern night, alone and afraid and valiantly ignoring the tears that cascade down from your eyes and into your hair.

  
Eventually, the lights fade from view, and you are left to stare at the slow trek of dawn across the sky.

  
“I have to leave,” you whisper to the stars.

  
Speaking the words brings the truth of them crashing down on you, and you pull yourself to your feet in an attempt to prevent the truth from crushing you completely.

  
_I must go_ , you think, and know that you are right.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Comments desired: apply below.
> 
> Any suggestions for how this should continue?
> 
> Tell me what you thought!


	13. Delivery

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Still not super happy with this chapter, but you guys are probably ready for an update. Let me know what you think!

The sun has barely risen when you knock on Gerdur’s door.

  
Your shortsword is at your hip, your knapsack is in your hands, and you have done your best to look presentable. You aren’t sure it really accomplished anything, but with your scars and your sword, you are at least almost presentable by Nordic standards, and that will have to do.

  
A small child opens the door and blinks up at you with sleep in his eyes and tangles in his vividly blond hair.

  
The child resembles Ralof to a heart-wrenching degree, but you smile sweetly and whisper, “Is your mother awake?”

  
The boy nods, but he is staring at you suspiciously.

  
_Nords_ , you think as you ask, “May I speak to her?”

  
“Who is it, Frodnar?”

  
Gerdur steps into the doorway with all the grace of an exasperated mother, which is actually more than you might have expected. She looks a bit taken aback at the sight of you, but she smiles warmly all the same.

  
“Ah, you’re Alvor’s guest, aren’t you? Oh… What was the name?”

  
You tell her and she smiles apologetically.

  
“Right, that’s it. Well, what can I do for you? Does Sigrid need something, or is Alvor done with that saw blade already?” Then, with a touch of panic, she adds, “Oh, no, is something wrong with the parts? Or with Alvor?”

  
You hold up a hand before she can work herself into the panic that all mothers seem to have ready and available at any time of the day. You brace yourself and silently  ~~pray~~ hope that she can’t smell the wine on your breath.

  
“Gerdur, isn’t it? I’m afraid we haven’t really had the chance to speak, and I… Well, you are Ralof’s sister, aren’t you?”

  
Gerdur’s eyes grow wide and she opens the door.

  
“Come in, come in, please. Have a seat. Do you have news? What’s going on? I heard--” Almost as an afterthought, she shoos Frodnar outside with a milking bucket and closes the door before continuing in a whisper. “We heard that Ulfric Stormcloak himself was captured by the Imperials!”

  
You have a short debate with yourself about how to go about this before settling on, “Ulfric...was captured. He was at Helgen. So was I.”

  
Gerdur gasps quietly and a look very much like respect comes into her eyes.

  
_It is misplaced_ , you think, but you know better than to say that.

  
“Did he escape? If you’re here, then there must have been an escape route! Oh, there’s been all kinds of awful stories: dragons and bandits and all sorts of nonsense. What really happened?”

  
It takes you a moment to remember that you aren’t here to relive the ~~flames scorching your skin, the cries of an orphaned child, the images that plague your every dream, the pain that haunts you whenever you touch your face or your hip~~ attack of the dragon.

You take a slow, steadying breath and offer Gerdur a small, sad smile.

  
“There was a dragon,” you say as confidently as you dare, “but that isn’t why I’m here. I have...news. About Ralof.”

  
She goes still in that way that one can only manage after hearing that news of one’s family is more important than news of a dragon, and you _hate_ this. It isn’t fair that she hears this from a stranger. It isn’t right that the Stormcloaks haven’t told her already. It is cruel and unjust and terrifying but so is the rest of the world, and you have already come this far.

  
“When the dragon attacked, it allowed the prisoners a moment to escape. We ran into the keep and made our way through the caves underground. There were soldiers along the way who tried to stop us, and… Gerdur. I am so sorry. Ralof is dead.”

  
She inhales sharply and her hands come to her lap in tight fists. She leans forward, resting her head on her clasped hands, and stays there in silence for what might be prayer or might just be the crashing of the world around her.

  
When she speaks, her voice is thickened by sorrow.

  
“I knew. When you stood at my door and said his name, I knew. They don’t send messages without any weight. I hoped it was a letter or an update or even a message that he was in a temple somewhere, but I should’ve known better.”

  
There is nothing that you can say to that, so you don’t say a thing. You sit there by the fire, twirling your found ring around your finger, and hope that she can recover from this.

  
“I… I brought you some things of his. It isn’t much,” it isn’t enough, “but he would’ve wanted them delivered.”

  
She doesn’t look up until you hold out your hand, presenting his hair beads and the amulet of Talos to her. Then she takes the trinkets from you with tears in her eyes.

  
She does not weep. She does not shriek. She doesn’t curse you or the gods or even her brother as you once thought that she might.

  
Gerdur looses one broken sob before composing herself with a steady breath and catching your gaze.

  
“Thank you,” she whispers. “We need more Stormcloaks like you.”

  
You are not a Stormcloak. In fact, you disagree with most of the Stormcloaks’ beliefs on sheer principle, but that feels too much like kicking her while she is down, so you only nod.

  
A few minutes into the stretch of silence that overtakes you, a large, heavily muscled Nord walks around the corner and stumbles back a step at the sight of you. He rushes to pull on a shirt and wipe the sleep from his eyes as he blinks at you.

  
“Gerdur, who’s this?”

  
Gerdur looks up at you with teary eyes before turning to Hod.

  
“A...friend. This is a very good friend of mine.”

  
Hod blinks at you before turning back to Gerdur with clear concern. You stand a bit stiffly, very much aware of the scrutiny, and bow your head to Gerdur.

  
“I should leave you. I… I truly am sorry. If I could have…” but you stop yourself.

Gerdur does not need your self-doubt and what-ifs. She needs comfort and a moment to compose herself. She needs to tell her family what she’s learned.

  
“I’ll be going.”

  
“Wait.”

  
Gerdur stands and walks to where you stand at the door. She smiles at you, but you can tell that it is not wholly sincere. You don’t blame her.

  
“I meant that. This is not the best of outcomes, but I do appreciate your telling me. There are not many who would have done so. I consider you a true friend to me and my family. If you are in need, please come to us.”

  
You do not deserve what she is offering, but you take it anyway.

  
“Thank you. I will remember your kindness. I-If you need anything…”

  
Gerdur nods at you and calls Frodnar inside. You stand on her steps and watch the door close.

  
You don’t wait to hear the gasp of Hod. You don’t stay long enough to hear Frodnar wail or Gerdur start weeping.

  
As soon as their tiny corner of the world seals itself away, you turn and dash to Faendal’s door.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> !!READ ME!!
> 
> This is unacceptably late, and for that, I apologize. It is very difficult to write when you have not had a day off from work in nearly a month, but I've been setting up a log of chapters over the last few days. Most of them are ready for upload already, and I am hoping to prevent this from happening again.
> 
> As far as uploads, I want your opinion: Would you prefer I upload many, possibly short chapters within the span of a few days, or would you prefer uploads with a bit of time between each? I will do my best to accomplish whichever gets the most votes!
> 
>  
> 
> Hey! If you want to get emails about when this work updates, you can subscribe to it! If you want updates about Equilibrate and other stuff, you can subscribe to me! Neat, huh?
> 
>  
> 
> Comments are always welcome! Tell me what you liked. Tell me what you hated. If I mess up something (i.e. putting a gender-specific thing/pronoun around Reader), PLEASE let me know.


	14. Plans

Faendal is sitting at his table, staring at his clasped hands and mulling over your words. You are pacing around his one-room house fiddling with an arrow because you have to have _something_ to focus on or you will lose your mind.

  
You are also fighting back the tears threatening to overtake you, but neither of you is crass enough to point that out.

  
(Honestly, you aren’t sure when you became so emotional. You can’t remember being so easily moved in a very long time, but you did recently suffer a head wound, and maybe damage to the brain can cause that sort of thing? After all, it did cause a rather significant amount of memory loss, and--

  
You pull yourself from the endless spiral of self-diagnosis. You might be a rather talented healer, but even you know better than to try to treat yourself.

  
Anyway, you have bigger problems.)

  
Faendal finally sighs and lifts his head to look at you. You try not to shift too much under his inspection.

  
“So,” Faendal begins, putting every bit of his exasperation into the word, “You knew Ralof. You escaped with Ralof. You brought Gerdur his possessions out of a sense of honor and duty and obligation, and you insist that you are not a Stormcloak.”

  
You nod when he turns to you for confirmation.

  
“And now you want to leave Riverwood.”

  
You nod again, and Faendal rubs his face tiredly.

  
There is a chest that doubles as a seat in front of Faendal’s second table, and this is where you sit when you fumble for a response.

  
“I was also hoping...that I could talk you into teaching me archery.”

  
Now you have his full attention, and Faendal is looking increasingly worried as you speak.

  
You speak anyway.

  
“I...don’t have much to pay you with, and I’m not stupid enough to think you could afford to train me for free. But I have basically no skill with weaponry, and I am also not stupid enough to think that I could survive on my own out there.”

  
Your voice actually breaks a bit on those last words, and you take a minute to compose yourself.

  
He doesn’t respond for several moments, so you pull your ring from your finger and hold it out with unsteady hands.

  
The ring you found in the depths of Helgen features a delightfully bright amethyst set as the eye of the silver wolf that makes up the band. It is beautiful and sturdy, and you had considered having it enchanted to produce a light or something equally useful.

  
It is also the most valuable thing you own, and you aren’t really sure what you’ll do if Faendal turns it down.

  
Faendal, however, is too occupied doing arithmetic in his head, trying to figure out what he could do to talk you out of this and how he could help you if you insist, to really pay attention to the ring.

  
But you aren’t a mind reader, so it is an absolute shock when Faendal says, “Alright. I’ll help you.”

  
You gape at him for several long moments before he sighs and says, “You’re a friend, so the ring is plenty payment, and you’re going to have to spend several hours every day practicing if you decide that you really do want to leave as early as you say. But… I think we could do it.”

  
You are so grateful that you fling your arms around Faendal, provoking a laugh as he returns your hug.

  
“Thank you! Oh, I’m so grateful to have you as a friend. You won’t regret this, I swear!”

  
You are too lost in your own joy and relief to hear the pain in Faendal’s voice as he mutters, “I hope not.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Shorter chapter today. Still not totally happy with these few, but I'm worried about fussing over it and making it worse.
> 
> Let me know what you think! Comments are always welcome.


	15. Lessons

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> In which being bad at archery is considered a disability in Valenwood and Faendal is likely a better friend than you deserve, even if you don't realize it.

It is barely noon, and Faendal is pulling your arrows from the tree where they are embedded. He is tired and a bit exasperated and wondering if this was really worth the ring you gave him, but he is also your friend, so he smiles as he tells you, “Well, you’re improving, at least.”

  
“Improving” is a generous term, to say the least. The tree was not your target. The real target is several feet to the left of the tree and so close to where you stand that, even from the short distance away that he is, Faendal might not risk shooting the target for fear of hitting you on accident.

  
Coming from a Bosmeri archer, that says quite a bit.

  
You are perhaps not as aware as Faendal, but you still manage to be very acutely conscious of just how terribly you are doing.

  
“This is hopeless. I should never have pestered you into this. You’re too kind to tell me how awful I am, but even I can see it!”

  
The only thing that keeps you from throwing a mild tantrum is that you are using Faendal’s practice bow, and you can’t imagine that he would be terribly pleased with you destroying it.

  
If a young Bosmer had been as terrible at archery as you are in Faendal’s home country of Valenwood, they would have been sent to healers or specially trained teachers who could assist them and care for them until they either left to a different part of Tamriel or found some useful thing they could do without being too much of a burden.

  
You are right. Faendal is far too kind to tell you these things.

  
Instead, he smiles and says. “Well, you can’t really do anything but improve, at this point.”

  
“Oh, thanks. Now I feel better.”

  
Faendal laughs at the dry tone of your voice and directs you to the proper stance.

  
“Now, feet apart. Um… Move the head of the arrow to the other side. You’re nocking it backward. Okay, better, but now your arm is crooked…”

  
~~~~~~

  
When the sun starts to set, Faendal calls off the lessons.

  
You have spent three-quarters of the day practicing archery. Your arms are tired, there are cramps in your abdomen, and your feet ache from running after arrows that missed your target by the width of a house.

  
But you can now hit the very edge of your target, and Faendal has declared it a victory.

  
You aren’t sure you agree.

  
You are hopeless, and you have made your peace with that. You are, in fact, considering how awful it could _really_ be to be eaten by a bear when Faendal announces with a sigh, “Alright. This is okay. You aren’t terrible. Meet me at my house tomorrow before sunrise. We’ll eat breakfast, and come out here. We can spend the day polishing off what you know.”

  
You are so stunned by this declaration that by the time Faendal has gathered his things and left, you are still standing there wondering _why_ you thought Faendal might be a lenient tutor.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Short chapter to keep you occupied while I finish the last details in the next few.
> 
> Comments are always welcome!
> 
> Does anybody actually care about chapter summaries? I'm not opposed to making it a regular thing, but I would like to know if it is actually being read.


	16. Hunting

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> You find a use for your incompetence, and frankly, it's a relief.

You oversleep.

  
You know this because Fenrer wakes you up by being incredibly noisy at breakfast as he stomps around the house saying his goodbyes to the smithing family and preparing to leave for Whiterun. Even from your cot in the cellar, you can hear the way he praises Alvor’s craftsmanship, and hearing his voice so early immediately puts you in a foul mood.

  
Realizing that you are late for breakfast with Faendal does nothing to help.

  
You rush to get dressed and bolt through the house, pausing only to take a piece of buttered bread from Sigrid and stumble over your thanks.

  
You reach Faendal’s house just as he steps out.

  
Faendal is dressed in a light set of fur armor and carrying a small bag at his hip. He is also extremely surprised to see you standing in front of him, panting from exertion.

  
“You’re late,” he finally says, and you make an incredibly rude gesture in response.

  
He only laughs.

  
Faendal reaches inside his house and takes his spare bow from the shelf. It is the same simple bow that you practiced with yesterday, and you are starting to suspect that Faendal is giving you the weaker of his two bows as a safety precaution.

  
You can’t _really_ blame him.

  
Faendal grins and starts walking out of town with you on his heels.

  
“Come on, then,” he says, and you are sure you hear a smile in those words. “We’re going hunting.”

  
~~~~~~

  
“We are going hunting,” turned out to be, “Faendal will try to hunt while you scare away every animal for miles.”

  
After what must have been the tenth rabbit that you’ve chased away in the last five minutes, Faendal motions for you to stand still and rubs his face.

  
“Okay,” he says. “This isn’t working.”

  
You are grateful enough for the calm in his voice that you don’t bother to point out that this was obvious even to you. Instead, you look around and try to come up with a plan that doesn’t end with you begging to be allowed to leave because something tells you that Faendal would not appreciate that sort of reaction.

  
“What if,” you try, certain that this is a terrible idea, “you hide somewhere, and I flush animals toward you? You could just pick them off, and my god-awful skill at stealth would be an advantage.”

  
Faendal stares at you for a long moment.

  
“N-Nevermind,” you stammer. “That was really--”

  
“Brilliant.”

  
“ …What?”

  
“You, my friend, are brilliant!”

  
Faendal looks around for a moment before he dashes to one of the largest pines in the area.

  
You are fairly certain that if you hugged this tree, your hands would not even touch on the other side, but Faendal takes one running leap and swings himself onto a branch about halfway up the trunk with the sort of ease that your eyes have difficulty following.

  
“Whoa,” you breathe, awed, but Faendal has already settled and drawn his bow. He gestures for you to move along, and you remember that this was actually _your_ idea.

  
Well.

  
Time to find some rabbits.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I never realize how short these are until I move them to AO3.
> 
> Comments desired: apply below.


	17. Honing

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> You find a reason to hit your target.

When Faendal had announced a lunch break, you were ecstatic. Chasing animals towards a lone tree in the middle of a clearing had not only made you look like a madman but it had also been absolutely _exhausting._

  
So you hadn’t complained when Faendal had insisted on teaching you the proper way to skin a rabbit. You had not complained when he had shown you the proper way to make snares or when he demonstrated how to use the organs of your catch as fishing lures. You had, in fact, even helped him cast the fishing net because you liked having friends, and you liked helping your friends, and Faendal was a very good friend.

  
Also, your father had spent his last years as a fisherman, and it was really very nice to help with something you actually understood.

  
Then Faendal had set two rabbits on a spit and left them to cook as he pulled out a piece of charcoal. He drew a rough, oblong target on a tree nearby and beamed at you.

  
“Alright. Time for that practice.”

  
Your muscles begin to preemptively cramp, and you start to speak because you haven’t complained until now, and you have been as helpful as you could manage, and you _deserve_ a real break.

  
Faendal is smiling at you, trying so very hard to be genuinely helpful, and you really _did_ ask him to help you learn archery, didn’t you?

  
You decide not to protest, but you sigh as loudly as you can to vent your frustration.

  
You stand with a quiet groan and stretch your muscles out. When you take the bow, you can’t _really_ stop the sneer that creeps across your face.

  
This thing is your enemy.

  
“Ah ha! That’s it!”

  
Faendal’s yell startles you enough to break you from your inner monologue of bow-hate, so you decide that it is probably important enough for your attention.

  
“What’s ‘it’?”

  
“Look, I spent a lot of time last night trying to figure out where we went wrong. Now, don’t misunderstand, you are a very dear friend, and I basically consider you family at this point, but when it comes to archery, you are… You are just awful.

  
“I have seen people who weren’t very skilled, and I am by no means a master marksman, but you are dreadful. Honestly, I wasn’t sure there was any hope at all yesterday, so it was almost a relief when I thought that you weren’t going to show up. It was…”

  
Faendal finally notices the nasty look you are directing at him, and he slowly falls silent. For a moment, you earnestly consider strangling him to death with his own bow, but…

  
You sigh.

  
“Yeah, okay,” you mumble. “You… _might_ have a point.”

  
“But! It might not be your fault!”

  
He’s giving you that hopeful smile that you haven’t seen since you began training with him.

  
You decide to consider it a good sign.

  
“Oh yeah?” Well, considering it a good sign doesn’t eliminate your snark, apparently. “If you have any ideas on how to fix it, I am listening.”

  
“Oh, I really do. You’re just overthinking things!”

  
You almost laugh until you see the look he’s giving you. He might actually be serious.

  
“Pray tell,” you begin, doing your best to keep your exasperation from dripping from the words, “How does one ‘overthink’ a deadly weapon?”

  
“Easily,” he laughs. “And, anyway, you aren’t overthinking the bow. At least, that’s not what I think the problem is. I think you think that shooting a bow is more complicated than it is.”

  
You blink at him.

  
“How could I possibly think it is too complicated?”

  
Faendal holds his hands up in a largely futile attempt to keep you calm.

  
“Well, you already know all the stances,” he says reasonably, “so it must be something else. Holding and preparing the bow isn’t that hard, and you’ve mostly memorized that.” Faendal shrugs. “I think you keep trying to aim.”

  
_That_ takes the wind right out of your sails. Instead of argumentative, you just feel confused.

  
“How in Oblivion am I supposed to shoot something if I don’t aim?”

  
Faendal smirks, and you _almost_ feel upset that you let him know he was right. Still, he is trying to help you, supposedly.

  
“You just let the bow take care of it.”

  
Faendal shrugs, but he continues when you glare at him.

  
“Okay, look, most of it is instinct. If you use the proper stance, and you face the thing you’re shooting, chances are that you’ll hit it most of the time. If you don’t, it isn’t all that difficult to see what you messed up, and it only gets easier with more time.”

  
You sigh.

  
“Apparently, my instincts are terrible.”

  
“No, not at all. You just...ignore them. Or don’t bother to listen to them. Either way, it should be an easy fix.”

  
You snort. As if anything around you has ever had the decency to be easy. Still, Faendal may be onto something.

  
“Well, it…can’t hurt, I suppose.”

  
Faendal actually cheers at that and takes up his position behind you as you fall into the stance.

  
You draw your borrowed bow, nock an arrow, and then--because you can’t really stop yourself; because you don’t really want to think too much about your decisions or you might change them; because deep down you don’t know why you’re trying so hard to leave such a lovely little town but you _are;_  because it eats you up inside that you can’t even remember _why_ you have this urge to travel; because you’ve been telling yourself that you need to seek healing but you _know_ that it is something more-- _then_ you close your eyes.

  
The backs of your eyelids look like a dimly lit dungeon. Two Stormcloaks rest in a sea of their own blood while Hadvar searches for a way out and Fenrer digs through the pockets of a dead man and you hold your steel shortsword up like a barrier against the world, against _him_.

  
Fenrer’s eyes _flash_.

  
You loose the arrow.

  
Faendal whoops, and you return to the present, and there are splinters of wood all around the place where your arrow has driven itself into the center of the target.

  
Faendal is celebrating, but you can not.

  
All you can do is stare as yellow pine sap bubbles and begins to flow to the ground from a target that suddenly resembles Fenrer’s beautiful silver eyes.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Comments? Please?


	18. Leaving

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Some tears, many hugs, and the reminder that even in the harshness of Skyrim, you have made an impact.

You don’t own much, but you still pack your bag that night after dinner.

  
Sigrid sits on a chair in the cellar, and watches you,

  
“So,” she whispers in a sad sort of way that almost makes you rethink leaving, “this is really it, huh? You’re as good as gone.”

  
You pause and set your knapsack to the side.

  
“Sigrid--”

  
“Don’t. I’m not trying to talk you out of it. I know that won’t work. I just…” She sighs. “I just wish there was more that I could do.”

  
For perhaps the first time, you hesitate to put your hand on Sigrid’s shoulder.

  
“Sigrid,” you whisper, “I will come back. I promise you, I won’t just forget you. How could I, when you saved my life and wormed your way into my heart?”

  
She punches your shoulder in a way that is weak for a Nord but will definitely bruise you, and you laugh when she finally smiles.

  
“Oh, don’t be like that, Sigrid. You know I grew on you, too.”

  
“Like a fungus,” she responds cheerfully before a frown overtakes her features again. “I am going to miss you, my friend.”

  
“I know,” you whisper because you do. “I’m going to miss you.”

  
Then Sigrid hugs you so tightly you might worry about broken ribs if you weren’t so focused on returning it.

  
~~~~~~

  
You wake to a breakfast fit for a king and large enough for an army.

  
Sigrid has put her best efforts forward, and you can't do much except hug her tightly in thanks.

  
After you eat, you gather your things, strap your shortsword to your hip, and prepare to leave only to be stopped at the top of the stairs by the entirety of Hadvar’s family bearing gifts.

  
Sigrid gives you two new sets of clothing and another hug that sneakily hides her teary eyes.

  
Hadvar gives you a bottle of your favorite wine and the promise that he’ll be waiting for you in Solitude if you ever decide to go that far.

  
Alvor, who you weren’t certain liked you all that much, gives you a set of studded armor that he hopes you never have to have repaired. It’s a gift and a wish for you to stay safe, and it brings tears to your eyes.

  
Then little Dorthe steps forward and tucks her copy of _Kolb & the Dragon_ into your hands, and you _do_ cry, throwing your arms around her and kissing her cheek until she squeals in delight and worms away. You call her ‘niece,’ and she grins.

  
The family does not follow you outside, but Nords have always been finicky about displayed emotions, so you understand.

  
(Un)Fortunately for you, Imperials and Bosmer have no such troubles.

  
Camilla is standing beside Faendal just inside the gate that leads out of Riverwood, and they both call your name in delight. Camilla is holding a bag of food that she pushes into your hands.

  
“You helped me--us--more than you realize. I will always be grateful to you for that, and wherever I may go, you can always count on shelter and warm greetings. You’re family, now.”

  
You try not to get too choked up when she flings her arms around you and hugs you almost as tightly as Sigrid did just the night before.

  
Faendal is grinning at you from the side of the road. He is wearing the same kit that he wore when you went hunting yesterday, and he pushes a bow in the style that he uses for hunting into your hands.

  
“You’re going to need this.”

  
You smile and try your best to keep the emotion out of your voice when you say, “And do you have some heartfelt goodbye for me, too? It seems that that is all I’ll be getting this morning: gifts and goodbyes.”

  
Faendal snorts derisively.

  
“No, no, I have no long-winded oath of friendship or future help.”

  
You can’t suppress the feeling of hurt that crashes over you, but you can ignore it when Faendal suddenly grins at you once more.

  
“After all,” he says, “it would be ridiculous for me to give you a farewell when I’m going with you.”

  
“What.”

  
Faendal only shrugs.

  
“Like Camilla says, you’re family these days. And what kind of brother would I be if I let you rush into certain doom?”

  
You are touched and a bit overwhelmed, but you are also unsure.

  
“Faendal… You don’t have to do this. You and Camilla--”

  
“Have already decided that this is for the best. I can go off, burn off some of that nervous energy driving me to explore, make some gold, keep you safe, and return just in time to whisk Cam off to Riften and get married.”

  
You turn to look at Camilla who, though blushing, is tracing a light, loving finger over the amulet of Mara hanging around her neck and partially tucked into her dress. The Helgen ring rests quietly on her finger, a subtle message to all of Tamriel that she is spoken for. She nods at you, and you can’t stop the grin that stretches over your face.

  
“So, you really are sure about this, Faendal?”

  
“My friend, I dearly love you, but you could find a way to get killed or injured by a set of armor, and that's only if you don't shoot yourself with that bow. _I_ can keep that from happening.”

  
He has a point.

  
“I… Alright, then.”

  
Faendal starts to speak, but Camilla pulls him down into a kiss so fierce that you blush and turn your head--and you are hardly a prude.

  
The couple exchanges quiet words, Camilla hugs you one last time, and then the two of you cross the bridge and turn toward Whiterun and the Temple of Kynareth, the Temple of Healing that you have promised yourself to visit.

  
You turn back only once when you are further down the road, but the trees and rocks obscure your view, and there is no one waiting for you anyway.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Anybody else remember way back in chapter five when I said something like, "Wow, OMG, Helgen took soooo long"?
> 
> Yeah.
> 
> I'm thinking it was the start of a trend.
> 
>  
> 
> Comments, considerations, concerns, criticisms? I want them all.


	19. Giants of Different Sizes

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Faendal is a cheeky shit, and you are struggling to be useful. 
> 
> Same as every day, really.

The road is longer than you had imagined. You end up camping under the stars that first night, staring at the lights that dance across the sky and hoping that it does not start to rain while you rest.

  
You find yourself unable to sleep, but you can’t figure out the exact cause of your restlessness, though you could theorize for days. In the end, you chalk it up to nerves and spend the next day listening to Faendal complain about your nonexistent snoring.

  
By the time you reach the outskirts of Whiterun, the sun has started its slow descent to the horizon, but it is still bright enough to burn at the back of your neck and make you shield your eyes.

  
Faendal seems largely unbothered by the journey because of course he is. He’s probably traveled further than this at least once a week on his morning hunts.

  
You, on the other hand, haven’t traveled this far since your family fled Cyrodiil, and those memories are hazy at best.

  
(In the quiet of the night, you’ve been trying to summon the things you’ve forgotten through force of will alone. You lay for hours at a time, tracing the lines of your mother’s face and replaying the sound of the twins’ laughter, doing your utmost to reinforce what you have and remember what you’ve lost.

  
It may even be working; these days, simple phrases and thoughts can trigger a whirl of images and sounds that could only be memories.

  
Thinking about the harsh Skyrim sun, for example, brings to mind childhood summers spent in Aleswell with your siblings, throwing water at one another and gorging yourself on a ripe melon. You remember that your mother’s parents would sometimes make the trip from their home in the Imperial City when your family could not go to them.

  
Your grandfather was a dour old man with the lines left by war still etched into his features, but he would always have the time to bounce the twins on his knees and talk magic with your brother.

  
Your grandmother always brought you a book, and you had loved her for it.)

  
At any rate, you are hardly in any condition to be traveling, and you are incredibly grateful that nothing has decided to attack you.

  
Then you turn the corner and see a giant smashing an entire field of produce for what you can only assume is the sheer pleasure it brings, and you resign yourself to a life of ugly surprises.

  
Faendal audibly gasps behind you and draws his bow.

  
You gawk.

  
“ _What_ are you doing, now?”

  
Faendal actually pauses to blink at you as if he is just now remembering that you are there.

  
“I’m going to help them.”

  
He gestures with a wide sweep as he speaks, and you notice that there is, in fact, a small cluster of people dashing about the giant’s legs. They all seem to be heavily armed and armored. Though that isn’t exactly unusual in Skyrim, these people still don’t strike you as farmers.

  
Faendal is running toward the group with his bow drawn and an arrow already in his hand.

  
You really don’t want to test your mettle against a giant, of all things, but if you let Faendal get himself killed, Camilla will be heartbroken.

  
Wasn’t _he_ supposed to be protecting _you?_

  
You draw your shortsword and make sure the bow that Faendal gave you is within easy reach. You still aren’t completely confident in your abilities, but if everything goes to Oblivion, you want to be prepared.

  
You don’t even really notice that you’re walking until the giant takes one massive step and collapses to the ground a foot away from you. The impact shakes the earth, and you fall flat to the ground and undoubtedly bruise your entire left side.

  
For a moment, you make eye contact with the fallen creature, and you would be willing to swear that he seemed almost ready to _speak_ to you.

  
But the light leaves those enormous eyes, and you are only staring at a dead  ~~man~~ giant.

  
“And just what did you think you were doing? Were you trying to get yourself killed?”

  
You look up, ready to bite out something entirely sarcastic, and see a goddess in human form.

  
Okay, logically, she’s probably just a really beautiful Nord, but you would still be open to worshipping her. She towers above you, all sculpted muscle and glowering eyes, and you actually feel your mouth water a little,  _shit--_

  
This woman is wearing armor that really seems more like a giant Fuck You to her enemies than effective protection. After all, the entire back of it is open, and her legs and sides have almost no protection.

  
It works. You are sufficiently intimidated.

  
“I… Uh…”

  
Faendal, Divines bless him, steps up to cover for you.

  
“My friend here was probably just trying to help. Right?”

  
He turns to you, and you nod quickly, trying to dust the mud from your clothes and convince yourself that it’s normal mud that isn’t bloody at all and also look impressive enough that this woman will look at you again.

  
She looks at you, but she is clearly not impressed.

  
“You should stick to the sidelines. If you aren’t a warrior, you don’t really have a place fighting with us. You, on the other hand…”

  
That sharp gaze turns to Faendal with a hint of approval, and you bite back a wistful sigh.

  
“You could make for a decent Shield Sibling.”

  
Faendal bursts into laughter, and you feel a wave of embarrassment when the Nordic archer raises a single, perfect brow at you.

  
“Oh, wow, I needed that laugh,” Faendal sighs happily. “No, really, thank you, it’s an honor to be considered, even casually, but the life of a Companion is…not the path for me.”

  
The woman starts to respond, but you blurt, “Uh, ‘scuse me, what exactly is a Companion?”

  
She raises a brow, looks you over, and, with the sort of dismissive air that you thought only Altmer were capable of, says, “A group of warriors. Don’t worry about it too much, little one.”

  
By the Divines, pretty people can be _dicks._

  
You hide your venom just enough to actually seem sweet and innocent when you ask, “Oh. So you’re like a poor man's Fighter’s Guild, then?”

  
The woman visibly bristles. If she were a dog, you would consider her hackles thoroughly raised and teeth visibly bared.

  
But she isn’t a dog. She’s just a little bit of a bitch.

  
Before the woman can respond, the mountain of a Nord beside her chuckles.

  
“I like ‘em,” he says in a baritone that shakes you to your core and makes your knees go weak, “and calm down, Aela. You kind of set that one up.”

  
The woman--Aela--glances over at the man before sighing.

  
“Fine, Farkas. Get the recruit. We were supposed to be done already.”

  
Farkas doesn’t exactly turn to you as much as he decides to cast a shadow in your direction. He is so large as to be intimidating, and though you would not describe him as beautiful in the way that Aela and Fenrer are, he certainly has a rugged, could-kill-you-with-a-handkerchief air to him that is oddly compelling in its own way.

You can't see all of his muscles, but you are pretty sure that he would make you drool, too.

  
“You’re going to Whiterun? We could get you inside.”

  
It takes you a minute to stop mentally stripping him and realize that Farkas was actually talking to you, but in that minute, Faendal has already responded.

  
“‘Get us inside’?” Faendal speaks, sounding worried, “Has Whiterun closed its walls?”

  
Aela gives Farkas the most annoyed look she can summon before sighing, “Yes, actually. All this talk of dragons returning has the Jarl feeling paranoid.”

  
You can feel the blood drain from your face. “Dragons,” she’d said. _Dragons_ , plural.

  
All at once and completely against your will, you feel heat on your face. Awful, indescribable, raging fire that melts your flesh and scars your body and makes you howl in agony while a child mere feet away from you screams for his father and bewails the loss of his mother and a soldier grabs your arm and pulls you to safety--

  
But it is only a memory, so when you focus your eyes, it is Faendal lightly holding your arm, asking with his eyes if you are well, and Hadvar’s harsh grip is only a distant phantom.

  
You shake yourself and mumble something about him not needing to worry.

  
(But that isn’t true, is it? He  _should_ be worried,  _you_ should be worried, but there is so much going on in your life, in the world, that you just don’t have the _fucking energy_.)

  
You want to say something to this woman. You want to tell her that the stories are true. You want to tell her that she shouldn’t dismiss the Jarl’s concerns as mere paranoia. You want to tell her to show some respect. You want to scream at her and yell at her and make her understand what it is that she’s dismissing as fantasy with that simple sentence.

  
Instead, you whisper, “What have you heard about dragons?”

  
Aela lifts one perfectly toned shoulder in a lazy shrug.

  
“Nothing much. Nothing credible. The biggest rumor is that Helgen was destroyed by a dragon, though not many of us believe that one. Some say that Ulfric Stormcloak escaped from the Imperials with the help of a dragon. Oblivion, some even say that he escaped on the _back_ of a dragon, but that’s nothing new. Stormcloaks can be...fanatic, sometimes.”

  
"The Helgen story is true.”

  
It takes you a few minutes to realize that it was _Faendal_ who spoke, and when you turn to him, he has a righteous fury on his face that makes you want to hug him.

  
Aela and Farkas exchange a shocked glance. Aela quirks a brow at Faendal.

  
“You...were there?” She asks, almost skeptically.

  
“Not in the slightest,” Faendal smirks and tips his head at you, “but they were. How do you think they got those scars?”

  
And then...Faendal does something that makes Aela look at you with genuine respect in her eyes.

  
Faendal says your name, which isn’t unusual. Then he says, “the Dragon-Marked,” and the armored Nords turn to you with an expression that you _haven’t earned,_ so why do people  _keep doing that--_

  
They turn to you with respect in their eyes, and you turn to Faendal with horror in yours.

  
Faendal has just given you an honor epithet, and he only smirks at the baffled dread that you respond with.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> You may have noticed that this fic is now part of a series. Keep an eye on that.
> 
> Any comments? I love them all!


	20. Familiar Faces

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Aela still doesn't like you, Farkas is warming up to you, and the recruit is lusting after Faendal.
> 
> Really, you aren't surprised.

After Faendal’s little stunt, the Companions had been much more willing to help you out.

  
Well, Aela was, at least. Farkas, bless his heart, had been eager to help you before; being able to call you “the Dragon-Marked” had only made him more excited.

  
If Aela was a chilled bitch, then Farkas was an excitable puppy. If he had been a smaller man, you’re half convinced that he would have tried to jump into your arms.

  
The walk into Whiterun was mostly calm. Faendal exchanged quiet words with the young recruit, who, much to Faendal’s dismay, absolutely fawned over him in return. Farkas kept a healthy conversation going with you while Aela silently led your little group on the winding road that led to Whiterun’s gate.

  
Farkas still appeared to be the sort of man who was completely capable of killing you with a hair tie, but he was warm and jovial and so very kind. He had asked, in a whispered excitement that did not at all match the rough baritone of his voice, if the dragon had been very large. He had asked if the dragon was frightening.

  
He had asked if your scar was really from Dragonfire.

  
“Bigger than you can imagine,” you’d replied. “Scarier than anything I’d ever experienced before.”

  
But when you tried to think about the scarring, your brain froze up.

  
After a long, tense moment wherein you tried your best to push away the phantom ache of healing burns, you croaked, “Yeah. Yeah, it was Dragonfire.”

  
Farkas did not press you for details, after that.

  
The walk up to the gates of Whiterun was otherwise largely uneventful.

  
The recruit, whose name you hadn’t caught, made a snarky comment about the Khajiiti campsite, after which Faendal ceased talking to her and ignored her very existence, despite her continued pestering and obvious annoyance.

  
Farkas stopped asking about your exploits and started regaling you with tales of his.

  
Aela… Aela-ed, you guess. She seemed the stoic sort. Or maybe she just didn’t like you.

  
Either way, she wasn’t much for conversation.

  
You alternated between mumbling affirmatives to whatever story Farkas was recounting at the moment and trying to be discreet about staring at his face.

  
You weren’t going to lie to yourself and say that you didn’t find these people attractive. They were stunning. You just happened to know better when it came to your flirtations. Aela didn’t like you, and Farkas was too excited for you to dampen his spirits with your libido; it was as simple as that.

  
You have just enough self-control that it is, in fact, honest to say that you weren’t staring at them because you thought they were beautiful.

  
Farkas and Aela seemed somehow familiar, but you couldn’t place them. You couldn’t even place what exactly it was that made them seem familiar, actually. There was just something there: a niggling thought at the back of your mind that you couldn’t pin down.

  
So the walk was quiet and brisk. You had reached the gate just as the sun had started setting, painting the sky in a hundred brilliant hues, and Aela had motioned for your small group to hush and gather yourselves.

  
You and Faendal took spots to Aela’s side while the tiny cluster of Companions distanced themselves in an obvious way.

  
They clearly wanted the guards to notice you.

  
And notice you they did! You are just about to question Aela or Farkas when a guard descends from his post on the rather decayed wall.

  
This guard is not as tall as the other Nords you’ve known, but he makes up for it by being rather roundish.

  
That is to say, he is not the image your mind conjures when you think of the frightening gatekeeper of a capital city. The man is round, slightly hunched over, and growing a fluffy white beard so long that it sticks out under his helmet even when tightly braided.

  
Despite all these things, he is still intimidating.

  
There is something about the helmet he wears that doesn’t sit well with you. The setting sun reflects from his eyes, making them seem like nothing more than white pinpricks of light, and the rest of his face is shrouded in shadow.

  
His face--or apparent nonexistence thereof--reminds you of the ancient wraiths from the stories your mother used to tell you, and that is enough for him to seem frightening to you.

  
Then he clears his throat and speaks in a voice like your grandfather’s, weathered and weary, and you are left wondering how it was he ever worried you at all.

  
(Later, when you are tucked into a bed and warm with wine, you will wonder at your reactions to people. Fear and attraction seem to be your default states, and there is probably something to be learned from that, but you won’t really be in a proper headspace to address it.

  
Besides, you can’t remember why you are as you are for anything else, so maybe you shouldn’t have expected anything different.)

  
“Companions,” the not-frightening guard says, “I am glad to see you return to us unharmed; however, your,” and here he pauses to look at you through the slit in his helmet’s visor, “friends are not welcome in our city. There is too much risk in this day and age for us to allow strangers into our homes.”

  
Something about his tone makes you think that this guard takes a perverse sort of pleasure in lording his power over the almighty Companions.

  
(Something about the way his obscured gaze lingers over Faendal makes you think that he knows a different definition of “strange” than you do.)

  
Then and there, you decide that this guard is an annoyance you shouldn’t have to suffer.

  
“They pose no threat,” Aela offers before you can start a fight. “In fact, our friend here is called Dragon-Marked, and for good reason, I hear. We thought the Jarl might have use of them. They were at Helgen.”

  
You cringe at your honor-name and hope it isn’t outwardly visible. You don’t think the Jarl could possibly have any sort of use for you, but admitting that might keep you from ever entering the city.

  
Your desire to visit the healing temple outweighs your good sense, so you keep your mouth firmly shut, unable to decide whether or not you want this guard to believe Aela.

  
Ultimately, you’re relying on the guard being impressed enough by the idea of your escape from Helgen that he lets you pass.

  
The guard laughs.

  
“Oh, is that right? Helgen, is it?” He snorts, dismissing your claim with the wave of one beefy hand. “Sure, I suppose after you heard about that one fellow, you decided that it might as well work a second time, yeah?”

  
A chill sweeps down your spine, and you swear.

  
“A...second time? Do you mean to say that another survivor of Helgen came through here?”

  
_Oh, Faendal, you sweet summer child, you._

  
“Right, sure, of course. ‘Another’ survivor,” the guard shakes his head, a parent laughing away the antics of a rowdy child. “In any case, that other fellow came through and went straight to the Jarl, he did. I doubt anyone in these walls has much use for you two.”

  
You are about to interject--probably to shove both feet firmly in your mouth, really--when Aela steps forward.

  
“I had hoped that you would allow our companions in on merit alone, but I see nothing is getting through that thick skull of yours. Very well. Let me make this plain: they are friends of The Companions of Jorrvaskr, and they have been promised sanctuary in our home.

  
“Now, pray tell, would you like to explain your refusal to allow us to keep an oath to your superiors, or shall I?”

  
_Holy shit._

  
If you thought that Aela was attractive when she was a seven-foot tower of Kill-A-Man, you are blown away by her now.

  
Even with your loud and proud relations, you have known few women willing to look an armed and armored man in the eye and tell him to go fuck himself in such a polite way.

  
(Your mother had always had a mouth on her, you remember. In fact, she’d been so stubbornly opinionated that your brother had genuinely, if briefly worried, that she’d be the one to get him expelled from the Arcane University.

  
You aren’t an idiot. You know very well that expectations are much different in Skyrim that they are in Cyrodiil.

  
Still, Aela leaves you momentarily stricken dumb.)

  
The guard grumbles and glances at you again, giving Faendal a more thorough examination, before turning to retrieve a key from one of his colleagues.

  
As he walks away, you hear something to the effect of “damn elves,” and it is only Faendal’s hand on your upper arm that keeps you from following the man.

(No, you don't know what you would have done, but it would have ended badly, you're certain.)

  
When he returns, the guard doesn’t spare your group another glance. He unlocks the door and disappears into one of the many alcoves along the wall.

  
You stare after him, considering, until Farkas’ soft chuckle drags your attention to him.

  
“Now, that was something! Hardly thought I’d see Aela defend an outsider anytime so soon!” He laughs and shoves Aela’s arm.

  
Aela smiles, finally lowering her armor a fraction, but you get the distinct impression that if anyone else had tried that move, they’d be missing a finger.

  
Farkas doesn’t seem to notice the danger he was nearly in, though, when he bellows, “To the tavern, to celebrate a fight well fought! Drinks are on me!”

  
Faendal cheers behind you and throws an arm around your shoulder, sending you both careening off the path.

  
You are surprised into laughter even as you try to right yourself.

  
Faendal detaches himself from you in order to chase after Farkas like a child might chase a shopkeep laden with shiny new toys.

  
You pause for a moment, staring after your friends, new and old, with an expression startlingly similar to a dopey grin.

  
(And if it is similar because that’s exactly what it _is_ , well, who could blame you? After all, you’re mid-epiphany, realizing just how lucky you are that everything has led you here.

  
A million choices, a billion tiny instances that determined your fate, and every one of them somehow led you to this exact moment.

  
You can’t believe your luck.)

 

From your side, just out of sight, Aela whispers, “You might not be so bad after all, kid.”

  
Barely thinking, you quip, “Most people have a better reaction to spending the night at my side, but I’ll take it.”

  
Your cheeks flush as you turn to her, mortified.

  
Aela freezes in shock for a half-moment before throwing her head back and absolutely _cackling_ into the night sky. She punches your shoulder, leaving you sore, and jogs after the others of your group, calling for Farkas to keep his promise of buying a round of ale.

  
You are frozen, but it is no longer embarrassment that keeps you there.

  
Since you met the duo, you’ve been trying to figure out why they seem so familiar to you...

  
You think you’ve got it, now.

  
As Aela had thrown her head back, her eyes had flashed.

  
Where Fenrer’s eyes had been molten silver, Aela’s were golden in the moonlight, bright and fearsome--the eyes of a predator.

  
_Like a wolf’s_ , you think, following them to the tavern.

  
You have questions, and you are sick and tired of being denied answers.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> OH BOY WHAT'S THIS
> 
> I'm sorry for the late update. I don't even have a good excuse this time. I'm just lazy.
> 
> This chapter was a struggle. I am still not totally happy with it, so it's possible that I'll edit it some later, but for now, I'm drained.
> 
> Update on life stuff you don't care about: I no longer have a job. This isn't really going to affect anything except to give me more time to write that I am almost certainly going to squander away like a jackass.
> 
> I intend to take a little bit of time to build a stockpile of chapters that I'm actually happy with for once. If I don't have any ideas for the canon story, there's a good chance I'll fill the series with little non-canon oneshots or drabbles. If there's anything like that you want me to write about (reader's forgotten childhood or snippets of the lives of other characters, for example), let me know in the comments!
> 
> If you liked this and want to see more of it, please let me know! I feed on positive reinforcement!


	21. The Bannered Mare

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> You're more cunning than you let on, and Aela learns that the hard way.

Aela’s eyes are green.

  
When she is angry, her gaze is sharp as steel. When she is happy, her eyes crinkle at the edges--even if she doesn’t smile. If the conversation becomes mournful or brings up painful memories, her gaze wanders, appearing almost disinterested, and her eyes seem dull, glassy.

  
Aela’s eyes are green.

  
Most of the time.

  
When the moonlight hits her face at just the right angle, when the candle sputters and casts a shadow on the patrons, when the tavern door opens and the snow outside bounces light into the room, Aela’s eyes stop being green and become _gold_.

  
These are the things you’ve noticed during your dinner in The Bannered Mare.

  
While Faendal and Farkas haggle good-naturedly over who should buy the next round--each voting for the other, of course, with Faendal’s preferred argument being something along the lines of, “You said that you would buy _drinks_. If you meant a single round, you should’ve specified.”--you try to talk yourself into confronting Aela and demanding answers.

  
So far, you haven’t been very persuasive.

  
_I don’t even really know her_ , Cowardice pipes up.

  
_It isn’t like she scares me_ , interjects Reason, _not the way Fenrer did_.

  
_She’s hiding something_ , squeaks Suspicion.

  
_Everybody shut up, I have this all under control_ , You finally decide, stopping the argument with yourself in its tracks.

  
“You look thoughtful,” Aela says, sliding into the chair across from you.

  
You’re startled for half a moment before you recognize the opportunity for what it is.

  
“Yes, well. That would be because I’ve been thinking.”

  
“Don’t strain yourself too much,” Aela smirks but there isn’t any venom in the words, so you smile back.

  
Of all the times for you to actually _need_ your father’s infamously persuasive smile, it had to be after you got a disfiguring facial scar, _honestly_.

  
The Divines have a really twisted sense of humor.

  
“I’ll do my best,” you offer. “It’s just that… Well, you remind me of someone I know.”

  
Aela quirks a brow.

  
“Is she at least pretty?”

  
You’re so surprised that your laugh isn’t even faked.

  
“Well, ‘she’ is a man, called Fenrer. But. Yes, he is _very_ pretty.”

  
Aela howls with laughter.

  
“Speaking of Fenrer, last I heard, he was heading this way. To Whiterun. I don’t suppose you’ve crossed paths with him?”

  
Aela takes a moment to think, looking around the room as though the answer will be written on the faces of her neighbors.

  
You refill the woman’s tankard with ale.

  
“No,” Aela finally offers, “I don’t think we’ve met. I’ve lived in Whiterun nearly all my life. I’d know if someone new came through.” She winks playfully at you, an alcohol-induced flush slowly working its way up her cheeks.

  
You smile.

  
“Only nearly all of your life? Where’d the rest of it go?”

  
You raise your cup to your lips, but you barely sip at it. By now, you know better than to get jagged when you have Faendal for company: the mer has an uncanny knack for convincing you into trouble, and he is never as sick as you are the next day.

  
And if that puts you at an unfair advantage when convincing Aela to talk, well…

  
Who decided fairness, anyway?

  
Aela gets a faraway look that means she’s reminiscing, and you wait for her answer.

  
“Rorikstead, when I was very young. I don’t remember much of it, but I do know that we lived there. Then a little homestead, of sorts, just outside of Riverwood. We lost it in a fire. Then my father found work in Whiterun, and by the time I was an adult, I was too attached to this place to ever leave it.”

  
It takes a few minutes--and another sip of wine--for you to realize that the look on Aela’s face is expectant.

  
“Oh, me? I’m from Cyrodiil. Nothing fancy though, I swear. I grew up in Aleswell, just outside of the Imperial City.” That’s where it is, right? You think so. “Er. ‘Just outside’ here meaning that we could walk into the city in a few hours if we hurried, but I remember the trip taking most of the day if we dawdled. I lived there all my life, really, until…”

  
_Focus._

  
“Well, until we moved here,” you finish, smiling at Aela over the rim of your cup.

  
“Your family has excellent timing.”

  
“Had,” you correct, clearing your throat and moving on before you have to deal with the sad sort of sympathy in her eyes.

  
“So, Aela, tell me about yourself.”

  
You don’t _really_ expect it to work, but Aela actually talks to you. Maybe it’s the drinking, maybe it’s the meal you buy her, maybe she just decides that she likes you enough to give you honesty.

  
Whatever the reason, Aela talks freely and happily without even trying to coax answers from you in turn.

  
Over the next several hours, you learn that Aela joined The Companions after her mother’s death when she was alone and lost. You learn that Aela had always wanted to travel, and The Companions had given her that and more. You learn that Aela had found a family like she had never truly known with this group of warriors. You learn that The Companions had led Aela to Skjor, whose name she whispers like a prayer, cheeks flushed.

  
You learn little things, too. You learn about Aela’s first bear hunt, and she shows you the scars on her thigh that shine white on brown skin. Aela confides that these were her first scars--first but not last, you learn--and they inspired the war paint that she wears, streaked like claws across her face.

  
All this and more, Aela confides in you.

  
Most importantly, you learn that Aela gets _very_ drunk _very_ quickly.

  
“So,” you drawl, pleasantly warmed by wine but not quite affected by it, though you play up your drunkenness for her sake, “you _sure_ you aren’t related to Fenrer? Not even distantly?”

  
Aela laughs in a way that you’ve silently sworn to never tell her is a giggle.

  
“I don’t even know him! Why? Is he that important to you?”

  
Aela attempts to waggle her eyebrows at you suggestively, but all she manages is a drunken grimace.

  
You _refuse_ to laugh.

  
“Pfft, no. I’m not even on good terms with the man, manipulative little shit,” you decide not to acknowledge the fact that you technically fit into that category too after tonight’s scheme. “It’s just that… Well, you do look so alike.” Here, you pause and pick up the candle on the table, angling it as though to see Aela’s features more clearly.

  
“After all,” you whisper as her eyes _flash_ , “both of you have eyes that do _that_ neat little trick.”

  
Aela jerks away from you as though she’s been scalded.

  
You smile, feigning innocence even though you know she must feel your smugness in the air.

  
Aela does not respond, but neither does she move away from you. She just stares, waiting for you to make the next move.

  
Farkas, apparently sensing the tension in the air, stops signing lewd tavern songs with Faendal long enough to walk to Aela.

  
“Is everything ok--”

  
“Of all the people in Whiterun,” Aela begins, interrupting Farkas and surprising you with the calm in her voice, “I never thought it would be a traveler like you that would notice.”

  
Farkas, sounding mildly panicked, chimes in, “What did they notice, Aela?”

  
“Yes, Aela,” your smile is more venom than charm, now, but she seems largely unfazed, “what, exactly, have I noticed?”

  
The other patrons of The Bannered Mare don’t even seem to see the three of you--Oblivion, even Faendal is largely ignoring you in favor of flirting half-heartedly with the server--but from your perspective, the whole world might have frozen, trapped within this moment in time.

  
Farkas pulls a nearby stool to your table with a soft sigh.

  
As he bends to take his seat, his beautiful blue eyes flicker into silver-gray in the candlelight.

  
“Well, Aela,” Farkas rumbles, apparently pretending you can’t hear him, “what do we tell them?”

  
“I have no idea,” she sighs, sounding out of her element for the first time all night, “but I get the impression that we’d better make it good.”


	22. To Jorrvaskr

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> You finally get some gods damned answers.
> 
> But not nearly enough of them.

You wake up beside Faendal in the room you rented.

  
Your mouth is dry, your head is pounding, you feel sick to your stomach, and you did not even get drunk last night.

But you had had one hell of a conversation with Aela and Farkas.

Not that you learned anything, of course. Those two could dance around a subject for centuries. They were masters at carrying a conversation without actually saying anything.

In fact, they were at least as good as you were, and the three of you had danced around each other well into the night.

Ultimately, you were at the very end of your wits when you finally yelled, “By the Divines, if I don’t get answers, then I will tell everyone from here to Hammerfell that the two of you aren’t even hum--”

Farkas cut you off by clamping one enormous hand over your mouth--and your cheekbones and jaw as well, if we’re being honest--and shooting the tavern at large an apologetic look while you raged and screamed against his hold.

It was like throwing your fists against a mountainside, and it isn’t until now, in the pale light of dawn, that you can see how bruised your knuckles had gotten.

Aela had silenced you with a disapproving look and told you to meet the two of them at Jorrvaskr for lunch the next d--

_Oh fuck._

With something like horror, you realize that it _is_ the next day, and you scramble around the room washing up and pulling on your best clothes.

After some deliberation, you realize that “best clothes” for the Companions might not be clothing at all and pull yourself into the suit of studded armor Alvor gave to you.

Faendal wakes up with a groan just as you are trying to figure out which straps go to what buckles and promptly vomits into the bucket beside the bed.

You laugh at him.

“Good morning, loverboy!”

“Oh, gods.”

“Have a nice night?”

“Please shut up.”

“Aw, what’s wrong? Saadia wasn’t everything you hoped for?”

Horror crawls over his features.

“Oh, shit. I didn’t..?”

You must have a cruel streak in you because you laugh for a long moment before you answer.

“Of course not, Faendal. Even completely sloshed, you’re a one-woman Mer. But not for lack of trying on Saadia’s part!”

You laugh as Faendal pushes a pillow over his head and swears violently. You try to restrain your giggles, you really do, but Faendal still ends up emphatically shushing you a few more times before he rolls out of bed and marches over to you.

“Divine’s sakes, that’s not even on the right way,” he mumbles as he takes your belt out of your hands and redoes it for you.

Even hungover, Faendal is helpful, so you stamp down your amusement. You force a smile when you say, “Any plans for today?”

Faendal looks at you like you’re insane.

“I thought you wanted to go to the Temple? Isn’t that the whole reason we came here?”

You mumble something vague and agreeable, staring into the distance, before you manage to choke out, “Well, actually, I thought that could...wait? Just a little while. It’s just that, well, I have to meet someone, and I thought it might actually be best if we split up for a moment or two.”

Faendal straightens up, crosses his arms, and gives you a look that you’d only ever seen on your older brother’s face.

(“You’re courting Fa’Dul,” he’d intoned in that dry, unamused tone you _know_ he got from your mother.

“ _Fa’Dul_ is courting _me_ ,” you’d hissed back, entirely over his merry teasing.

It was just one dance, after all, and you weren’t planning on marrying him, but your brother had been so determined to embarrass you. _Please_ , as though you’d be embarrassed over passing time with a Khajiit when everyone from Aleswell to High Rock knew that your family tree was more like one of those vines that just takes over and incorporates whatever structure it’s exposed to.

He’d laughed and let you leave, only to reappear at the dance with his arm slung around the lovely Dunmer girl whose family owned the Aleswell Inn.

His gall had truly irked you some days.)

You can’t bear to stare at that look for long, so you smile and turn your head.

“You could hunt or buy supplies. I won’t be long, Faendal, I swear, and I’ll go with you to visit the priests right after! Please, just,” you pause, wondering if this sounds too pathetic, too manipulative, and you worry because that seems to be something you slip into rather easily these days. You don’t want to be just another silver-tongue who manipulates people to get what they want; you don’t want to be Fenrer.

You sigh. “Please, Faendal, just trust me?”

~~Your brother~~ Faendal stares at you for a long moment before sighing and nodding.

“Fine,” he says, throwing his hands up, “Fine! I’m going to shop around, see if there’s anyone with a remedy before we spend all that coin with the healers, and then we meet up at the Gildergreen after lunch, alright?”

You beam.

“The perfect plan! I’ll see you then.”

You bounce out of the room, laughing as Faendal curses you and pulls his own armor on.

~~~~~~

Jorrvaskr is intimidating.

You’ve been standing outside the mead hall, wondering if this was really worth it, for several minutes now, and frankly, you haven’t actually decided if you’re going to go in.

You’re no fool. You’ve asked around, and you’ve heard the stories. Jorrvaskr is filled to the brim with warriors who’ve trained their entire lives for some idiot to break in.

These people could probably kill you with a well-aimed vase.

The thought isn’t as attractive as it was yesterday when you were drinking and Farkas was all big muscles and soft eyes.

You adjust your shortsword at your hip, curse yourself for not bringing your bow, and stride into the building as though you own it.

Half a dozen pairs of eyes turn away from the dinner table and over to you at once, and you pause.

A man with greying hair and a scarred eye stands from the table…

...and _keeps standing_.

There is _so much_ of this guy. Dibella’s tits, he is _tall_.

The giant of a man walks over to you with an expression bordering on thunderous, and you try your absolute best not to squeal.

“Well,” he begins with a voice like a landslide, “what are you here for? Looking to get recruited, or do you have a job for us?”

You can’t physically stop the snort that escapes you at that, but you do your best to look horrified by it.

“Um. No, I’m not. I’m actually here for Aela and Farkas?”

As you speak, the warrior’s face darkens until he looks like a thundercloud-turned-man.

“Yeah? Why?”

_Well, you see, sir, your colleagues are a bunch of actual monsters, and I really would like an explanation for that, but I’d rather not get killed, so I agreed to meet them here, which was probably a really bad idea, actually, now that I think about it…_

“Well?”

  
That...might not go over well.

“Um,” you begin eloquently, “I met them last night. Outside of Whiterun? There was a giant and… T-That doesn’t matter. They helped me get inside, and we had an appointment, of sorts, set for today. Did they mention me at all? My name is--”

“No. They didn’t.”

This man might be the least helpful man you’ve met since ~~Ralof pushed you from a window~~ you left Cyrodiil, which is saying something.

You are so done with this.

You draw yourself up into your full height, push your shoulders back, and cross your arms, adopting what your mother might’ve called the I’m Very Important stance.

“Look,” you snap with a confidence you don’t feel at all, “I don’t know who you are, and I don’t really care. If you know where Aela and Farkas are, then I need that information. I have to speak to them, and I will speak to them. The only question here is whether or not you’re going to help me do that in a timely manner.”

You were expecting rage and hate from this man. You thought he would throw you out on your ear and leave you at square one. You really, honestly believed that he might even knock out a tooth or two, but you’re absolutely fed up, so you risked it.

The poor guy just looks completely and utterly baffled.

“I think,” he begins with a clear and obvious hesitance that you also weren’t expecting, “that you are the very first person I have ever met who dared to speak to me that way.”

The people still seated around the table laugh, and you realize that you had an audience the entire time.

Still, none of them seem particularly upset or murderous, so you risk raising an eyebrow.

“Alright. That still doesn’t answer me.”

The grizzled warrior throws his head back and lets out a roar of a laugh. He throws a hand for yours, clasps your forearm, and shakes so emphatically that, for a brief moment, you worry he’ll throw you through the ceiling.

Instead, he grins and says, “I’m Skjor, and this is Jorrvaskr. Farkas isn’t here at the moment: he’s out with his brother on a troll hunt. But Aela is--”

“Behind you, you oaf.”

Skjor spins around, and you lean to the side to see around his bulk.

As promised, Aela is standing in front of an open doorway that, based on appearance alone, must lead to part of their training yard. She’s grinning, and Skjor is turning decidedly pink.

“How long--”

“Long enough,” Aela interrupts Skjor and winks at you. “Hello, friend. You’re here to talk to me about yesterday’s Hunt, yes?”

The way she says “hunt” feels important, and the way Skjor’s head whips around to you makes you think that it somehow is, but you don’t understand, so you settle for nodding.

Skjor is shocked.

“Then, this is…?”

You supply your name helpfully and sigh as his shock grows.

“So they did mention me, huh?”

Skjor has the good sense to at least look abashed.

Aela laughs cheerfully and grabs your arm to lead you toward the stairs.

“This way, my friend. Kodlak wants to speak to you.”

You turn to look over your shoulder as Aela drags you along, expecting to see someone staring. Instead, you see Skjor following along and the rest of the recruits staring resolutely at their meals.

You don’t feel confident about this.

You follow anyway.

Aela pulls you along past all of the living quarters, through the common room, and to the very last door of the passage. Once there, she releases you, directs you to stand outside with Skjor, and vanishes behind the heavy doors.

You attempt awkward small talk with Skjor, but he just glares at you, all former humor gone, so you end up with awkward silence instead.

You’re starting to regret calling Aela out. This just doesn’t seem like a great situation.

After several tense moments, the door opens, and Aela gently pulls you inside.

“This,” she says in a tone that demands your attention and respect, “is Kodlak Whitemane.”

Kodlak, you notice, is very old.

In Cyrodiil, many of your neighbors lived to be old men. Aleswell is a small town of farmers and shepherds, and your mother’s many acquaintances were old friends who still lived in the Imperial City and were almost disgustingly wealthy.

Warrior Deaths are not a thing you grew up knowing, and still, you are surprised to find that Kodlak seems to be at least as old as your grandfather was when he passed in his sleep.

“Hello,” you say, bobbing into a form that is almost, but not quite, entirely unlike a bow. “I am--”

“I know,” Kodlak smiles and gestures for you to sit as he does, His eyes are warm and kind, and there is something particularly youthful about his smile, but the steel of a warrior’s gaze never really leaves, and you know at once that he is watching you. Waiting for your move.

“Aela tells me that you have some questions for me.”

You feel cold all over.

“For you? I’m afraid I don’t understand.”

You turn to look at Aela for confirmation and see that Skjor is standing just behind her. From this angle, a nearby wall sconce casts a perfect pane of light on the couple’s eyes.

The couple’s _golden_ eyes.

You turn back to Kodlak just in time to see him lean toward you across the table.

His once blue eyes are nearly white in the candlelight.

“You aren’t human,” you whisper, and your voice trembles.

“No,” Kodlak agrees, all but growling around the words. “We are not.”

_I’m trapped_ , you realize, and silently curse yourself. You walked right into the den of monsters, and you didn’t even tell anyone where you went. You let Aela lead you straight into the center of these beasts for the sake of curiosity, and you _hate_ yourself for it. This is not the sort of rookie mistake that you, the product of two long lines of mages and warriors, should be making.

But you will be _damned_ if you die before you at least get any answers.

“Well then, Kodlak Whitemane, what are you?”

Aela chuckles from behind you, but you don’t have the strength of heart to turn to her.

“I told you, Kodlak. This one has spirit.”

The old man before you leans back in his chair and considers you for a long moment.

“We are werewolves.”

There is a part of you that wants to laugh at him. You would very much like to scoff and turn away and insist that he tell you the truth, because you are sick of the lies and jokes, and everyone knows that werewolves are mindless rabid animals.

But you’re smarter than that, and the person who might have said those things died in Helgen when you were scarred by Dragonfire--or maybe they died in the Pale Pass, with the rest of your family, when an Imperial soldier cracked your skull with his pommel.

You don’t laugh or turn away or ask for truth or even smile.

You nod.

“Show me.”

If the tension wasn’t palpable before, then it is now. Your words hang in the air, thick and cloying like summer’s heat, and the group around you suffocates under their weight.

Kodlak turns to Aela and Skjor--at least one of whom is likely his second, you realize--and nods back to you, much to your shock.

“Very well. Follow me.”

Kodlak stands and leaves the room, followed by the others.

On shaking knees, you follow.

~~~~~~

The Underforge is dark and damp and warmed by hot springs beneath the rock. It smells, you note with no small amount of humor, not unlike a wet dog.

Kodlak has told you that this is not a place he exposes lightly.

“It is sacred to us,” he whispers. “But you have had many a chance to report us to some organization that might wipe us out, and you have not. That is reason enough to trust you.”

You didn’t really listen.

To your mind, you are going to die. You are going to be told whatever they will tell you, you might finally have an answer for the Mystery of Fenrer, and then they will kill you.

You have accepted this as fact, and Kodlak’s assurances of trust bounce off of you the way ~~arrows bounce off Dragonskin~~ ice spells bounce off a Frost Troll.

Then Kodlak turns to his fellows and asks for a volunteer.

Skjor glares at you without speaking a word, but Aela steps forward and begins to shuck her clothing. You try to politely turn your head, but you don’t want to miss the transformation, so you can’t stay properly focused on any one thing for very long.

And, you really can’t stress this enough, Aela is _devastatingly_ attractive.

Skjor glares at you all the while.

When Aela is nude, she does a full body stretch as though limbering up for a swim. Then she topples to the floor and _roars._

You watch skin stretch and pull and tear away, hear bones snap and pop and creak, watch teeth fold back and be replaced by fangs as long as your index finger, and you are in _awe_.

Some part of you distantly notes that the transformation isn’t as it is described in books that glorify these beasts. None of Aela’s skin or teeth or hair actually falls to the floor of the cave; rather, it appears to fold inward, as though she were merely turning inside out, and a wolf resided within her.

At the end of this process, Aela has been replaced by a monster of fangs and fur that towers above you at what can only be the ten-foot mark.

The monster hums at you and makes the same sort of snuffling sound that you’ve come to associate with dogs catching your scent.

“Hello there, little one,” Aela sighs, and her words sound as though they are being bounced between boulders during a landslide.

“Hey.”

You are absolutely breathless at the display, but you still manage to get out, “Alright, you can kill me now,” with some small degree of respectability.

The Underforge goes completely silent. The air is heavy, almost like a physical thing, until Skjor breaks through it with, “And just why would we do that?”

Now you’re the one confused, though that happens a lot these days.

“Because I know about you? I'm dangerous, right? That's how these things go, generally speaking. Most werewolves would probably not be too keen on hoping some random human decides not to turn them all in to the Vigilants of Stendarr, I'd wager.”

The werewolves look at one another in honest bafflement.

“Unless...you weren’t planning on killing me? Holy shit, are you werewolves without a plan? Because that just seems dangerous, and frankly, I would rather die knowing you had a plan for this eventuality than continue living knowing there’s a whole bunch of werewolves just loose in Whiterun who don’t know how schedules work.”

Kodlak Whitemane is staring at you in something remarkably close to horror, which is understandable considering the way you ramble when you’re nervous. Then Kodlak’s face splits in this uncanny way that is just barely starting to unnerve you when he falls against the stone basin in the center of the room, laughing so hard he can barely stand.

Aela joins in, and her rough bark fades into the peals of laughter a _very_ tired woman might emit as she shrinks and folds in on herself until she is human in appearance once more and leaning heavily on Skjor.

Skjor just stares at you, but he looks confused again, so you’ll count it as a win.

“Oh, child,” Kodlak begins, clicking his tongue at you and shaking his head as he regains control of himself, “Come inside, won’t you? Have lunch with us. We have...quite a bit to discuss, I think.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Skim edited this one, so be sure to let me know if something is wrong or just doesn't make sense!
> 
> I'm officially just using names of characters from past ES games for figures from the Reader's past and various NPCs, so... Does anybody have a character they want to see in a cameo for Equilibrate?
> 
> If you haven't checked out the rest of this series, be sure to do so. I don't always update it, but I do take requests for bonus/deleted scenes. (I.e. a chapter from the POV of a different character, a What Could've Gone Wrong, or just a snippet from Reader's lost memories that won't make it into the canon fic.) Chances are that if you want to see it, I've already got it written/brainstormed somewhere, and I'm just waiting to see if anyone's interested!
> 
>  
> 
> Please comment! It makes my day.


	23. Under the Gildergreen

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> You regroup with Faendal.

You spend more time than necessary drinking tea with Kodlak and trading myths for truths.

  
You learn that werewolves are, in general, able to control their own transformations, which of course sparks an entire host of other questions. Kodlak dodges your questions about feeding on people, but he admits that the vicious attacks you hear the most about tend to be done by ferals who have lost any humanity they had.

  
More than that, Kodlak refuses to say.

  
You ask about that infamous book, _A Werewolf’s Confession_ , and the relation between the Ooze of Bosmer legend and lycanthropy. You wonder aloud about the connection to the Wild Hunt and idly mention Hircine’s position as the Father of Manbeasts.

  
You manage to work your way through an entire lunch’s rambling before Kodlak starts to become visibly uncomfortable with your line of questioning. An entire meal’s conversation about a secret that they hold so close to their hearts is quite a lot of information, and the very idea of having that much trust makes you feel lighter, so you eventually stop asking about the lycanthropy and try to just provide quality company, much to Kodlak's visible relief.

  
However, this doesn’t diminish the conversation. If anything, the stifling of your questions gives Kodlak the freedom to talk about other relatively normal events that he clearly doesn’t get the opportunity to talk about often.

  
Kodlak knits, apparently, and he takes great joy in explaining the intricacies of purl stitching to you. The two of you bond over a shared love for myths, legends, and knowledge in general, and Kodlak confesses to a secret love of alchemy that, as he puts it, “just doesn’t translate into the life of a Companion, you understand.”

  
By the time you realize that you’re late to meet Faendal, you’ve come to consider Kodlak a great friend, so you promise to return as soon as you possibly can.

  
“I get the impression you didn’t follow the others inside the gates just to chat with an old man, then,” he notes with considerable amusement.

  
You flush.

  
“Er, no, I didn’t. But I did enjoy it! We’ll have to meet again sometime. I-If you’re okay with that, I mean.”

  
You stumble over your words for a minute as you realize that Kodlak Whitemane is the _leader_ of the _Companions_ , and as such, he may not really be interested in sitting around a pot of tea with a civilian and discussing what type of wool would be best for a baby’s blanket.

  
Kodlak smiles and carefully moves his dishes aside.

  
“Of course. It’s delightful to get such an honest, fresh perspective. We don’t have many young civilians around here that are willing to clearly state their minds to me. It’s a relief.”

  
You fight down another flush as you say, “Well, then I’ll be sure to stop by before I leave!”

  
“Leave?”

  
Halfway out the door, you pause and turn back to Kodlak.

  
“Oh, yes. I only came to see if there is something to be done for my...ailment.”

  
Kodlak raises a brow and says apologetically, “I’m afraid there is no cure for the mark of Dragonfire, my friend.”

  
You start at the reminder of your scarring, wondering what else the others told him about you, and clench your fists in the loops of your armor to keep yourself from raising a hand to your cheek. Your smile is tight and forced when you mumble, “That isn’t what I need to be healed.”

  
When Kodlak only stares at you, wondering, you mumble your way through, “Head injury. I have issues with memory, both new and old, and at this point, I just want my life back.”

 

Kodlak's eyes widen, and you blunder your way through a lightly edited version of your experiences in the Pale Pass and Helgen, knowing that you probably should have just led with that. His expression becomes knowing, almost understanding.

  
“You may not get them, you know," he finally responds. "I’ve known men who were harmed in similar ways in battle. They did not always regain what they had lost.”

  
“What did they lose?”

  
Kodlak gives you a look so full of pity that it gags you.

  
“You don’t really want to know that.”

  
“...No. I don’t.”

  
A moment swells before you, the knowledge that Kodlak might be able to help in some way thickening the air, but it passes as you sigh.

  
“I’m sorry, Kodlak, but my friend…”

  
He waves you off.

  
“Go, go. Enjoy your youth while you have it. But… Dragon-Marked? I would like to speak to you, before you leave.”

  
There’s something there, a tightness in his features that worries you even more than his use of your honor-name, but Faendal is waiting for you, so you only nod and smile.

  
“Of course, Kodlak. I’ll see you soon.”

  
~~~~~~

  
Faendal is pacing when you reach him.

  
“There you are! Do you know you’re late?”

  
You try not to smile. As much as you appreciate it, Faendal’s overprotective nature is more likely to get both of you killed than it is to actually save you, especially since you associate with werewolves now, apparently.

  
“Surprisingly, I do, though it wasn’t on purpose, I swear. Find anything good?”

  
You drop your eyes to the bag on Faendal’s arm, which is somehow bulkier than it was when you left that morning, and fall into one of the benches beneath the large tree. Faendal sits beside you, settling his supply pack between the two of you.

  
“I found a place for supplies if that’s what you mean. There’s a shop here run by two Bosmer brothers who still hold the Green Pact, so we’ll be able to take plenty of dried and preserved things with us when we head out.”

  
“Head out?” You raise a brow. “Where are we going?”

  
Faendal turns to you, incredulous.

  
“You mean you don’t have a plan yet? Honestly, I don’t understand you, sometimes.”

  
Faendal laughs happily at your confusion, but your expression makes him fall silent.

  
“Did you...plan to go back to Riverwood? Really?”

  
No, you didn’t, but it isn’t until just now that you realize that. You can’t possibly go back to Riverwood--which doesn’t make any sense at all because it’s the closest thing you have to a home, and you already miss it, and ~~your family~~ Alvor’s family means an awful lot to you--but you have so many questions that the mere thought of settling into that tiny town without learning anything physically hurts you.

  
But you can’t say that. That’s a truth that’s too heavy and too harsh for you to make it someone else’s problem, so you can’t tell Faendal that.

  
Somehow, Faendal knows anyway.

  
“Alright,” he whispers. “When you do decide where to go, you know I’ll be with you. Don’t you?”

  
_Do I?_

  
You don’t say that. Instead, you nod to the bag and say, “Well, if you haven’t got supplies for the trip back to Riverwood, then what’s all that?”

  
Faendal, ever the loving friend, sees the subject change for what it is and follows along anyway.

  
“Oh, this? Nothing really. A couple of deliveries, more or less. Found a way to make a bit of coin and figured I shouldn’t pass up the opportunity.”

  
On some level, you had expected Faendal to treat his leave from Riverwood as something of a vacation. He doesn’t have to work at the mill, he doesn’t have to compete with Sven anymore, and he doesn’t even have to hunt while you’re in Whiterun.

  
So, of course, he found a job, anyway.

  
You roll your eyes good-naturedly and laugh.

  
“Alright then. Your business is your own. You can go off and--”

  
“Ah, ah! What are you, crazy? You said you’d go to the healer today.”

  
“Oh,” you sigh more than say, gaze drifting to the Temple behind you. “I guess I did. Fine, that first, and then you can go off on your ‘deliveries’ while I rent us a room for the night.”

  
“Deal. Now, come on.”

  
Faendal grabs your arm and pulls you up from the bench as though he’s afraid trusting you to simply follow will get you into even more trouble.

  
These days, he might even be right, so you only laugh as you go.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I say this a lot, but I genuinely appreciate your comments. It's a nice reminder that I'm not just shouting into the void, and sometimes, I need that.


	24. Kynareth's Temple

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> You finally go to the healers.
> 
>  
> 
> (Wanna know what Faendal did while you were busy in the last few chapters? Check out Equilibrants in the Balancing Act series.)

The Temple of Kynareth is not overly impressive or large. It isn’t the huge structure that the temples of Cyrodiil are, and it isn’t decorated in the magnificent finery that some Daedric shrines are said to be. It’s a small affair, about the size of one of the local shops, with a large open space that smells fresh and inviting. Most of the stone tables are occupied by sleeping patients, and priests mill about tending to their various needs and kneeling before the altar.

When you enter, the woman in charge approaches and introduces herself as Danica Pure-Spring.

“I need your help,” you blurt in response, feeling like a fool. “Please, it… Well, it isn’t urgent, but it is severe and I could use some treatment if you have it.”

Danica laughs.

“If? Child, there is no need to worry. If yours is an ailment of the body, then I can heal you. If it is of the spirit, then you need only turn to Kynareth. Now, what causes you such grief?”

Danica leads you to the empty table and has you sit while she retrieves a small box of alchemy ingredients. Faendal follows along and stands dutifully at your side, which surprises you even though it probably shouldn’t.

“My ailment is a bit more complex than that, I’m afraid.”

“Oh?” Danica must be a woman who loves a good challenge because the thought of an unusual case makes her smile. “Well, you fill me in on all the details, won’t you? I’ll get something for those burns of yours--they look new. I might be able to lessen the scarring if I--”

“No.”

Danica and Faendal turn to you, and you flush as you realize how harsh your voice was. Even you can tell that was an overreaction. You turn your head, trying to look anywhere but at them.

Quietly, you finish, “I have it on good authority that there is no treatment for Dragonfire.”

A vial slips from Danica’s fingers and shatters on the floor. She gasps out a curse and rushes to clean the salve away before the smell of mint becomes too overpowering.

“You don’t mean-- That is to say--” She pauses to collect her words and finally whispers, “Were you at Helgen?”

“Yes, I was. No, what I’m here for isn’t from there. Well, I don’t think so, at least. I think… I was _told_ that I was injured in a scuffle with soldiers near the Pale Pass. My family was passing into Skyrim, and we were found by a group of soldiers…”

Danica nods knowingly, and you wonder how many times she’s heard similar stories.

Sigrid once told you that Whiterun Hold is the last neutral territory in all of Skyrim. Every other area chose its side long before you came to the country, and the people of Whiterun are perfectly happy staying peaceful for as long as they can.

Sigrid had also told you that the pressure was clearly on. Troops from both sides of the war had been sighted in camps throughout the hold, and only a fool would think that they could stay neutral for much longer.

You had silently wondered if that meant that Whiterun had become a haven of sorts for people who wanted to live in peace.

Now, you wonder how many of those people had been successful.

“Anyway,” you try, clearing your throat and pushing all of those unpleasant ideas firmly to the back of your mind so Future You can deal with them, “I’ve been having memory trouble, but that doesn’t really do the thing justice. I’ve got these...huge gaps in my mind like someone bored holes in my skull and sucked out all my thoughts.

“I can remember some things, like my name and my family and my hometown, but some specifics are completely blank. My brother’s name, my father’s face, my mothers’ hobbies, everything about my younger siblings… It’s just _gone_. A-And some of it is there, but blurry. You ever been really drunk and all your memories are hazy the next day?”

Danica raises an amused brow at you, and you flush.

“Well, I mean, that’s what happens. And that’s what it’s like, sometimes.”

Faendal is a wonderful friend, and he is resolutely _not_ laughing at you, bless him.

Danica examines you for a long moment before nodding.

“I don’t know about this firsthand, but I believe I’ve read about it. If you’ll give me a moment, I can search our tomes and find answers for you. Is that alright?”

You nod, and Danica turns to walk into another room. As she passes you, she reaches out and settles a hand on your shoulder.

“I am very sorry,” she whispers and disappears through the wooden doors.

Faendal sighs and pushes you over so he can take a seat beside you.

“Well, looks like we’ll be here longer than I’d hoped.”

“Sorry, Faendal. You can go, if you’d like. I know you have things to do,” you tease, dropping a pointed gaze to the bulky bag at his side.

“And miss this? My friend, you must have me confused for a mer with a lesser taste for dramatics!”

You almost laugh, but the sincerity on Faendal’s face stops you.

Faendal was not the first person you befriended in this country, but he was the first person you had completely confided in, and he is, without a doubt, your closest friend.

You smile and bump your shoulder against Faendal’s.

“Thanks,” you whisper, grinning when your sincerity turns him a delightful shade of pink.

Faendal is your brother in everything but name, which means that you are completely within your rights to tease him mercilessly and report these sorts of reactions to Camilla.

You make a mental note to send Camilla a letter before you leave Whiterun.

“Well,” Danica sighs as she returns with a leatherbound book in one hand, “I have found a reference to a condition very similar to your own in a journal left behind by one of my predecessors. Do you have any trouble creating new memories, or is the memory only affecting your old ones?”

“Er, no, not really. Some of Helgen is a little blurry, but there was… There was an awful lot happening at the moment.”

Danica frowns and references the book in her hands once more before sighing softly and shutting it.

“Still, his problem sounds similar enough to your own that perhaps the remedy would work for you, too.”

“There’s a remedy?” You and Faendal speak at the same time and turn to one another in delight.

“There is,” Danica smiles, but it wavers. “But--”

“Oh, of course, there’s a ‘but.’ Just our luck,” Faendal grumbles.

You’re too upset to even nudge him for his rudeness.

Danica sighs.

“Yes, there is a catch. For what it’s worth, I _am_ sorry about it.”

“Well, tell us what it is,” you sigh, rubbing your eyes tiredly. It has been an extremely long day.

“I...do not actually _have_ the remedy.”

There are still other people in the temple, and there is a surplus of light and fresh air, but it suddenly feels as though the walls are closing in on you. You feel suffocated and hopelessly alone.

Faendal is less affected.

“ _What_?”

He’s shouting, which is something Faendal has _never_ done around you, but you’re actually kind of grateful since you’re in no state to shout for yourself.

Danica rubs at her temples as she says, “Trust me, I’ve looked. I would love nothing more than to help you, and I mean that with all of my being.

“But the man who shared your condition was sent to another temple with better resources for study and healing. The priestess who wrote this journal claims that she received a letter from him some time later, but the letter was either never put into the journal or was lost many years ago. All she wrote of its contents say that the man was all but completely healed, and he thanked her profusely for the help she gave.”

“What temple do I have to go to?”

“Solitude’s, I believe,” Danica mumbles with an apologetic look.

“ _Shit,_ ” Faendal hisses.

You’re inclined to agree.

“Danica, what do you mean ‘believe’?”

She frowns at you, as though she somehow expected you to ignore that bit.

“The priestess said that she sent the patient to the ‘main temple,’ which I’m forced to assume is the Temple of the Divines located in the capital, Solitude.”

“Couldn’t that temple have moved around in the years following that journal?”

Danica stiffens and shifts uncomfortably where she stands.

“Well,” she begins with obvious hesitation, “therein lies the problem. It _is_ possible, though not very likely. Honestly, does it matter? The Temple of the Divines is the closest thing we have to a main temple. It’s your best lead.”

You sigh and press your fists into your eyes until stars explode on the insides of your eyelids.

Faendal sighs and stands.

“Alright, alright. I have to deliver these things, and then we can focus on travel plans, alright?”

You hum vaguely. It’s the best you can manage right now.

Faendal pats your shoulder and whispers, “I’ll get us a room at The Bannered Mare, too. You go get a drink, my friend. You deserve it. Need it, even.” Then he disappears with a quiet chuckle.

There’s a long moment where you just...sit there, trying to regain your bearings and push aside that yawning chasm that aches deep within your chest.

You were _so close_.

Really, you should’ve known better, but this is _the_ Temple of Kynareth, a place renowned for its power in healing, and you were so hopeful that this could all _end._

“Friend,” Danica starts, but she pauses as though to collect her thoughts. When she speaks again, she sounds almost as sad as you feel. “I am sorry. I had hoped to help you, really. I… I don’t know what your cure will take, but for your sake, I hope that it is simple and easy to obtain.”

You snort.

“I seriously doubt that it will be. When I realized that I couldn’t heal this myself, Faendal suggested this place, and… Well. I had such high hopes. But I guess we were wrong.”

You sigh.

“Danica, please humor me: did the journal mention _anything_ at _all_ about the advice that priestess gave her patient? If he said it helped him even a little bit…”

Danica opens the journal and rereads the pages that she found, though you are almost certain that she doesn’t need to read the text to know your answer. Still, she hums quietly, sounding almost surprised, and you remember that you have been wrong before.

“Well, she does mention a journal. Apparently, recording his memories and his day-to-day events helped him remember everything a bit more clearly, though it doesn’t say whether or not he found it easier to recall those memories that were, and I quote, ‘left as blanks in his mind, like ink spilled across a page and blotting out any text below.’

“Unfortunately, that’s as much detail as she left for us. The best advice I can offer is to try the same thing. Perhaps a journal will help you remove that haze from your thoughts. At the very least, I imagine it would help you remember your day-to-day if your condition ever progressed to the state that this patient’s was.”

The very idea of being unable to remember your days fills you with an existential dread that borders on helpless panic, and you can’t _deal with that,_ so you shove it aside and focus on your breathing until you feel normal again.

“Okay,” you sigh, “I’ll remember that. Maybe… Maybe it’ll even help. I don’t know.”

You sit there in silence, rubbing your eyes and wondering just how long you’ve overstayed your welcome, before a thought makes you chuckle.

“Well, Faendal was right about one thing.”

“Yes? What is that?”

“I _absolutely_ need a drink.”

Danica starts and then laughs, and you smile weakly in turn.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I'm back! Sorry about the hiatus. It was...not my decision. If anyone wants specifics, just ask in the comments, and I will fill you in.
> 
> if you don't want specifics, that's fine too! All that matters is that I'm back, and I've got a bunch of chapters that you're probably ready for. (Not as many as I should have, after that break, but that hardly matters. R-Right?)
> 
> Comments still make me really happy!


	25. In Whiterun

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> You don't plan to stay in Whiterun very long, but you do anyway, and... You like it, actually.

You don’t go get a drink.

Instead, you sit beneath the Gildergreen and stare up through the bare branches at the beautiful blue sky, feeling sorry for yourself.

It isn’t that you mean to mope. Not really. You’re just so disappointed.

You knew not to get your hopes up. You _knew._ Maybe you never finished your training as a healer--or maybe you did, you can’t remember either way--but you certainly knew that the worst injuries are the hardest to heal, and injuries of the mind are doubly so. You knew better. You _know_ better.

Divines damn you, it still _hurts._

You sigh and stare at the Companions’ hall and wonder if you should bother them for the second time in one day.

No, you shouldn’t. They’re a guild of fighters who spend their days training, drinking, and fighting for coin. They don’t need you bothering them out of nowhere.

You file the thought away for later, though. You don’t know many people here, but Kodlak and Farkas are friendly enough, and Aela is warming up to you.

Sort of.

In any case, that still leaves you with nothing to do, and you haven’t seen Faendal since he left the temple, which means you don’t even have anyone to talk to, really.

But… You do have a bit of coin.

You stand and make your way down the short section of stairs that leads you to the section of the city that Faendal had referred to as the Plains District. There’s a host of stalls here, as well as a handful of storefronts, but none of them are your goal. Instead, you continue down the path to the smithy at Whiterun’s gates.

You had caught a glimpse of this place when you entered the city alongside the Companions, but your fatigue coupled with the late hour had made you all but dismiss it. Even so, you had seen the woman working to lock up her business, and you had sworn to visit her shop and see if she could outfit you with a weapon you might make better use of or, at the very least, give you some tips for wielding your weaponry.

So far, your fighting style was limited to the ever unique tactics of “Shoot the Bow and Hope Faendal Kills it First,” “Swing the Sword and Hope Faendal Kills it First,” and “Silent and Rapid Prayer.”

You would take any and all help you could get.

(Also, though you would never admit it aloud, you had a small and secret prejudice against blacksmiths of the male persuasion.

The smith of Aleswell was an Orcish woman who had been an absolute master of her craft, with a wit as sharp as her blades and a humor dry enough to spark a flame. She had given your elder brother a dagger made of steel when he left for the Arcane University of the Imperial City, and he had returned with a story of that same dagger saving his life against an entire mob of goblins that had tried to prevent him from reaching the components for his staff.

You had been shopping in the Imperial City with your father when a suave Imperial man had smooth-talked you into buying a steel dagger that he swore would stay sharp for months, even with heavy use!

You dropped it just outside his shop, and the pommel broke on impact, revealing rotten wood beneath.

You learned your lesson.)

So you plaster on a friendly smile and force a cheerful tone when you say, “Hello there. You’re the town smith?”

The woman moves from her position at the workbench, setting a handful of leather strips beside the armor on her table, and turns to you with the grim suspicion that you’ve accepted as the default expression for most Nords--which is actually a surprise, for once, since this woman appears to be an Imperial.

You smile back. After all, you’re used to it.

“You’re the Dragon-Marked,” she says, and your smile falls.

“How could you know that name?”

“One of the Companions was overheard calling you that in The Bannered Mare last night.” She pauses and looks away in embarrassment. “I apologize if you did not intend for me to call you as such. Word travels quickly in such a small city…”

“No, it’s…” Not fine. You still aren’t comfortable _having_ the scars--you don’t want that to be what people remember about you--but it’s not actually terrible either, not really. “...a thing you said. Forget about it.”

The woman nods, and you give her your name. She smiles just enough for you to realize that it’s even there.

“I am Adrianne Avenicci. Are you looking for something in particular, or would you like to request an item? If you’re wanting to browse, you should go inside and speak with my husband, Ulfberth. We sell quality equipment at fair prices, and we’re sure to have something you need.”

“Oh, actually, I was hoping for some information. I have weapons, a bow and a steel shortsword, but they are found things, and I don’t have an eye for weaponry. I was wondering if you or others in your shop gave lessons in weapon upkeep and usage?”

Adrienne stares at you for a long moment, leaning against a wooden support as she considers your words.

“Unfortunately, my shop doesn’t offer anything like that. I could repair your items if you’d like, but we don’t have lessons.”

“Oh, well. Sorry to bother you, then. I’ll just--”

“Now, hold on. I didn’t say I couldn’t help you.

“If you want lessons with actually _using_ a sword, there’s a man in the Wind District, a Redguard by the name of Amren, who might be able to help you. He used to do mercenary work--still does, I believe, though not very often--and he knows his way around a sword and shield like you wouldn’t believe. An absolute master of the field, that one.

“If you need supplies for your bow, that place, just behind you, is The Drunken Huntsman. We have arrows and bows aplenty, too, but I wouldn’t be worth my hammer if I wasn’t willing to admit that they have a better shop and a wider variety of equipment.

“Well, when it comes to archery, at least,” she pauses to wink at you. “In any case, it’s run by a pair of Bosmer brothers, and I hear Anoriath is a frightening sight with a bow in his hands, but I haven’t heard of any lessons. Good place to get a strong drink, though, if The Bannered Mare is too crowded for your tastes…”

She says that last part almost wistfully, staring over your shoulder at the mentioned building.

“Thank you. I appreciate it. Really.”

Adrianne smiles at you.

“Anything for a...customer.”

There’s something about the way that she pauses before she finishes her sentence that makes you wonder what she intended to say and why she would’ve changed it.

Then you see the way her eyes linger over the left side of your face, and you decide that you just don’t really want to know.

~~~~~~

You do eventually follow Adrianne’s directions, but it takes a few days.

First, you and Faendal come up with a plan. You record it on a piece of parchment and nail the paper to the wall beside your rented bed.

The plan goes something like this:

  1. You will stay in Whiterun for a few days--or weeks, if you absolutely must. In this time, you will work with the local alchemist to produce potions and run errands, and Faendal will work with Anoriath and his brother to hunt and deliver goods. In this way, the two of you will earn enough spare coin to support yourselves for some time.
  2. You will leave for Solitude alongside a group of travelers. You voted for a Khajiit caravan, but Faendal leaned toward simply hiring a cart if funds allowed. You ultimately decided to choose when the time comes.
  3. In Solitude, you will go directly to the Temple and ask to see a healer.
  4. You haven’t gotten this far, but it’s gonna be good.



Of course, nothing ever goes according to plan, and you end up adding additional notes in the margins as your plan derails slightly.

For example, Faendal disappears one day while out hunting with Anoriath, only to return late that night. He is soaked in blood and walking with a limp when you see him, but he is grinning and holding up a decently sized coinpurse.

“Oh Divines, who did you rob?”

Faendal laughs.

You, being genuinely concerned, do not.

“Didn’t rob anyone,” he insists. “Actually, quite the opposite. Sit down. I’m going to tell you a story.”

You do.

And he does.

Apparently, Faendal ran into [some trouble while hunting.](https://archiveofourown.org/works/16038701/chapters/37591094) He doesn’t specify what type, probably due to a bruised pride, but you get the distinct impression that he tried to kill/eat a creature that very much disliked the notion of being killed/eaten. He ran for the hills--quite literally--and found himself stumbling face-first into a nest of bandits who attacked him immediately and viciously. From there, of course, the only viable course of action was to violently exterminate the entire group in self-defense. Or so Faendal says. When he returned to town, purse jingling and a new sword at his hip, a Redguard man named Amren confronted him, only to reward him when Faendal graciously gave him the iron sword he’d recovered from the corpse of a bandit--which, apparently, once belonged to Amren’s father.

The result of this, beyond the money Faendal had both found and received, was that Amren had offered to teach you a thing or two about self-defense, completely free of charge.

You add “Lessons with Amren” to the parchment on the wall.

Faendal’s misadventure wasn’t the only thing to change your plans, of course.

On your end, the alchemist you work for, Arcadia, eventually sends you to Farengar to gather supplies he’s holding for her. While speaking with Farengar, you bring up his magical talent and your own familial history, and he offers you lessons in a school of your choice for the price of a single gold piece every week. That turns out to be an offer you can’t refuse, and you turn to the Temple in order to make the extra money. Working as an extra healer and assistant nets you two additional gold a week. The extra gold piece goes in your pocket, and you manage to train with both Farengar and Amren, honing your skill with a sword significantly more easily than your skill with magic.

Magic...does not come easily to you.

~~~~~~

“You need to focus,” Farengar says, _again_ , as though you haven’t focused a day since you were born.

You grit your teeth.

You _are_ focusing.

Every thought is occupied by the very essence of flame itself. You feel the heat in your cupped hand and smell the air as it wavers above your empty palm. You taste brimstone and charcoal on your tongue, and the strain has caused sweat to bead on every inch of exposed skin.

You are struggling against some impossible wall, and the wall is winning.

Until it…isn’t.

Magic roars into existence, and the spell takes shape.

You _feel_ the flame take form more than you see it. Orange and red, it flickers to life in your palm, but behind your eyelids, it manifests simply as an extension of yourself and your power, burning white-hot along a tendril of your magicka.

Before your triumph can make you lose focus, you pull your hand back and fling a jet of flame at the target before you. The fire leaps from your hands, rushes toward the target, and--

…And it dies about a foot away from you.

“Mother _fucker_.”

“Language,” Farengar warns, but you know he doesn’t really care. He just feels obligated to keep the Jarl’s children from hearing if they happen to stumble onto the Great Porch.

“I _had_ it,” you insist, spinning to face your teacher as he approaches the target that you have, once again, failed to hit.

“I know.”

“I don’t know how you expect me to--” You pause your tirade as the wizard’s words register. “Wait. What do you mean ‘I know’?”

Farengar sighs.

“It means that I know you had the spell right. It also means that I know this isn’t working, and my lessons don’t really do anything for you. It means that I can’t help you with these spells anymore.”

“Now hold on a fucking--”

He silences you with a raised hand.

“What it does _not_ mean is that we’re giving up. You just have to accept that Destruction is not the school for you.”

You deflate. You had been so looking forward to throwing flame and ice at the barest thought, but…

“Well, why not?”

Farengar gestures you over to a set of comfortable chairs, and while you collapse into one gratefully, he sinks into his seat almost regally.

_The prick._

“It probably has something to do with your skill as a healer. You do know some Restoration spells, do you not?”

You do, actually.

Your very first lesson was spent meditating and channeling your magicka reserves. That channeling had, completely accidentally, taken the form of Healing Hands, and Farengar had been as surprised as you were to watch the minor cut on his thumb seal itself shut.

In the present, Farengar sighs.

“Magic, my pupil, is all about _intent_.

“Do you intend to harm your target? Then you will. Do you intend to heal them? Then you shall. Whether conjuring a daedroth or muffling your footsteps, your intentions give the spell the fuel it needs to take shape.

“But if your intent is unclear or your target is not direct, then the spell will die, and you will lose your focus.”

You sigh and wipe the sweat from your brow.

“Then how am I supposed to keep my ‘intents’ separate?”

“You don’t.”

Your head whips around to send Farengar a questioning gaze, but you find him holding his hand up to stop any possible complaints.

“It _is_ possible. After all, you’ve seen me demonstrate a bit of every magic school, though it is no secret that I prefer elemental spells. Many casters can keep their intentions clear, despite constantly switching between spells.

“You, however, are not one of them. I think you are too…”

He pauses, searching for an inoffensive word, before shrugging and continuing.

“You are too nice. Your desire to help others outweighs your desire to harm, and it shows in your spellcasting. You cast a Restoration spell without focusing at all! That should tell you everything you need to know about the way your mind works.

“So… Harmful magics elude you. Your flames become warm breezes, your frost chills ale, and your sparks bring a light, tickling sensation. You just…aren’t capable of harming another.”

The lifeless eyes and blood-stained lips of a Stormcloak flash in your mind, complete with your shortsword buried to the hilt in his chest, and you laugh hollowly.

“I think I could surprise you.”

Farengar’s lips twist in a humorless smile, but it slips away before you see.

“You already have, my friend.”

You sigh and pull yourself to your feet, feeling a pit open in your stomach at the idea of something else that you can’t do.

“Well. Sorry for wasting your time, Farengar, but--”

“Now, hold on,” he nearly shouts, standing beside you. “I did say that we aren’t giving up, didn’t I? You may be incapable of using Destruction magics, but I think I can help you, still.”

“What could I possibly learn, if not Destruction?”

It had always seemed to you that Destruction was the easiest--and, aside from Restoration, most useful--of the schools, and the idea of being unable to master magic hits you like a physical blow.

But if he thinks you can still learn…

Farengar turns away from you and approaches one of the many bookshelves in Dragonsreach. You stand there, dumbfounded, until he returns and pushes a book into your hands.

“I think this will do nicely.”

The book is a deep purple, which surprises you more than anything, at first. Purple dye is expensive, and you can already tell from that alone that these books don’t come easily. But there’s something else that unnerves you…

The cover is decorated with an Oblivion gate.

“No.”

Farengar laughs.

“And why not? Are you the superstitious sort, believing ghosts will haunt your thoughts and mind if you disturb them? Or do you associate the school of Conjuration with exiled Necromancers, prowling in the dark and the dampness with zombies shambling after them?”

You try to hand the book back, but Farengar easily sidesteps your reach.

“Both? Both sound like an option I’d take.”

“Then you are a fool.”

You turn to Farengar, offended, only to find him smiling.

He shakes his head at you and says, “Magic is only a tool. You have a shortsword, there on your hip. Don’t you fight with it?”

“Well, yes, but only--”

“Then what makes you different from the common bandit?”  
“--but _only to defend myself_ , Farengar. I couldn’t rob people to support myself! Oblivion, I couldn’t even rob people to support others!”

“Why not?”

“Well, for one thing, I just don’t have the upper body strength for it, but, mostly, it’s because I could never _intentionally_ do any harm to anoth-- …Oh.”

Farengar _laughs_ at whatever expression the realization brings across your face, and you blush.

“Alright, laugh it up. Are you going to teach me or not?”

So he does.

~~~~~~

And that’s how your days go.

You get three lessons with Amren and make a new friend in the process, and you and Faendal take to sparing with Amren and inviting him along to watch you ~~fail miserably at~~ learn archery. You heal the wounded and sick with potions and spells crafted by your own hands. You spend lessons with Farengar learning to raise the dead and commune with spirits. Kodlak, in an attempt to keep your interactions light-hearted and pleasant, teaches you to knit, and you eventually, _finally_ , convince Arcadia and Farengar to get lunch together a few times a week instead of bashfully dancing around one another forever.

And at the end of the day, you record everything, no matter how insignificant, in your journal.

It’s...really nice. It feels _normal_ , and you need that. Besides a few slips, no one comments on your scarring, and you begin to forget it even exists.

(But you don’t forget Helgen, no matter how you try.

You still have night terrors and flashbacks. You still occasionally wake up, screaming, with the glassy eyes of dead soldiers and your mostly-forgotten family imprinted on your mind.

In some of your dreams, you watch your brother die horrifically, though never the same way twice. Some of your dreams are second-by-second replays of the fight against the first and last Stormcloak man you’d ever killed, only for him to morph into your brother as your shortsword sinks into his chest. In some, your brother’s flesh melts away as he screams for your help, and he becomes Ralof’s disfigured corpse.

The other dreams are worse.

And always, you hear the screams.)

Despite the other problems you deal with and your hole-filled memory, you actually feel...safe. For the first time in weeks, you feel like you actually belong somewhere.

You’re... _happy._

So, of course, it doesn’t last.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> First time putting links in a chapter. If all goes well, it should take you to a chapter of Equilibrants. Please tell me if it doesn't work properly.
> 
> Comments?
> 
> I was going to space this out more, but I couldn't resist uploading the 25th chapter on the 25th, so...


	26. To Fight

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> You aren't allowed to have nice things.

You are walking out of Dragonsreach and smiling. Today is a good day, and you and Faendal plan to celebrate by getting lunch with Arcadia, who has become something of a maternal figure to you since learning of your condition. Your tunic is slightly stained from the dust that your most recently revived rabbit had become, but Farengar had called your spellcasting “flawless,” so you were thrilled anyway.

So thrilled, in fact, that you only see Fenrer after you run into his chest.

He isn’t thrilled to see you, but you can’t exactly blame him. The two of you have a relationship that’s lukewarm at the very best of times and positively frigid otherwise.

Also, you did just bruise your nose on his armor.

“Oh. It’s you,” he mumbles.

You’re too surprised by his appearance to respond.

Fenrer is wearing a suit of fine leather armor and has a greatsword strapped to his back. His backpack is worn and ragged, but clearly full of supplies and equipment. He seems larger in that armor and more intimidating, which you weren’t sure was possible.

Frankly, he looks like a Nordic hero just returned from battle--majestic glare included.

His face, though, is what shocks you.

Fenrer is  _ pale _ \--and he isn’t just Nord pale, either. He looks like he’s been hiding from the sun for months. He’s also thin in a way that makes you want to feed him well until he looks healthy again, and you find yourself wondering how he could possibly manage to lift the greatsword on his back if he hasn’t bothered to eat anything since he came to Skyrim.

Then you realize that it’s only been a month since you last saw him.

“Divines, Fenrer! What happened to you?”

For a moment, you really think he’ll reply, but he only sighs and pushes past you into Dragonsreach. As the door swings shut, you see Fenrer turn and walk directly for Farengar’s office.

It doesn’t occur to you to tell Fenrer that Farengar’s in a meeting until the door slams shut, but by then, he’s gone and separated from you by more than just a wooden door.

~~~~~~

When you ask Faendal if he saw Fenrer earlier today, he only stares at you.

“Unless he has a twin brother, I’ve seen him every day for the past week. Why? Did something happen?”

Faendal doesn’t really know Fenrer, but he thinks well of him for helping Camilla and her brother recover their old heirloom. You hadn’t wanted to ruin a hero for him, so you never did tell Faendal the specifics of your relationship with Fenrer. 

Now, you wish you had.

Still, Faendal knows that the two of you don’t particularly like one another, so he is only a little surprised when you say, “No. I didn’t even know he was in Whiterun.”

“He isn’t… Do you think he’s been avoiding you?”

The thought gives you pause. 

Why would Fenrer avoid you, of all people? He certainly wasn’t afraid to approach you in the past.

_ It doesn’t matter _ , you decide.  _ Better this way, anyhow. I don’t like him much either. _

Your chest aches for a moment, but you convince yourself that the feeling is a tentative relief.

~~~~~~

You see Fenrer again later that night.

You and Faendal had decided to go for a walk in the brisk evening air in the hopes that the chill would alleviate the effects of the extra mead you’d had with dinner. Maybe not your smartest move, but you told yourself that you were safe within the walls of Whiterun and hoped it was true.

You’re down by the gates when the shouting starts.

Somewhere, a bell tolls, and torches light up the night. Soldiers run wildly, drawing swords and congregating under the archway that leads out of the city. 

For a terrifying moment, you worry that the civil war has finally decided to take Whiterun, but the other shouts replace that fear with one that is much, much worse.

_ Dragon, _ they say, voices a mix of horror and awe.  _ Dragon at the watchtower! _

Some part of their fear has been replaced by amazement, and you almost envy their innocent outlooks on the situation.

You, on the other hand, can feel the fire on your face, contrasting sharply with the ice that is suddenly running through your veins.

It’s an  _ incredibly _ sobering experience.

“There’s a dragon at the watchtower! Irileth is on her way. You’ll wait for her and follow along when she comes to you. Do you understand?”

The familiarity of that voice is what finally pulls you away from your memories.

“Oh, gods. Fenrer?”

He turns to you, and a shadow passes over his face.

“You. What are you doing here?”

“ _ Me _ ? What are  _ you _ going to do? Storm a dragon and hope for the best?”

Fenrer glares at you, but he can’t hold your gaze for long. His eyes drop, but his fist is gripping the hilt of his dagger, and you know this argument is a waste of time.

“Divines. That’s it, isn’t it? You’re going to run off and die fighting this beast? What are you  _ thinking _ ?”

_ That  _ does it. When he looks back up, there’s fire in his eyes.

“Someone has to try! We can’t just sit around mewling and waiting for this thing to destroy us. I’d much rather die fighting. Wouldn’t you?”

“Fenrer, there’s got to be--”

“Get out of my way, little one. This is not a fight for you.”

You stare at his back as he walks away from you and down the path and out of the city.

And then he’s simply…gone.

The sun has long set by now. The assembled soldiers, waiting for their leader, have begun speaking in quiet, fearful tones and gripping their torches as though fire will scare away the beast they go to face--as though it is only a child’s nightmare, and light will vanquish the monsters as easily as a sword. They’re scared, as they should be, but that realization sparks something deep in your gut, and you find yourself scowling.

“Yes. It  _ is _ my fight.”

You only realize that you’ve been touching your scar when, with a gentle grip on your wrist, Faendal pulls your hand away.

“I was afraid you might say that,” he murmurs, frowning.

“Oh, Faendal,” you sigh fondly, “Go back to the inn. Get a good night’s rest, and then… Then go home in the morning. Go back to Camilla. Without me. Okay?”

After all, he offered his help, but he didn’t offer his life, and you can’t--you  _ won’t _ \--ask it of him. No one deserves death by Dragonfire, but especially not loyal, loving Faendal, who was there for you when no one else could be. 

He deserves so much more than that.

Faendal frowns, but he considers it. He really and truly thinks about leaving you there in the street with nothing but a dull sword and a half-formed plan. He even looks at the inn longingly before he finally turns back to you.

“No.”

“Faendal--”

“ _ No. _ If it’s your fight, then it’s mine, too.” He grins. “I’m not leaving you until one of us dies in some suitably tragic and heroic manner.”

You can’t help the small, wry grin that spreads over your face.

“That could very well happen tonight,” you whisper.

Faendal shrugs as though he hasn’t got a care in the world, but fear twinkles in his coal black eyes.

Fear, but courage, too.

“Well, we can at least make him fight for it.”

You laugh, but it’s a sad and broken sound.

“Alright then.”

You have no illusions about your chances of success, but you can at least try.

You can fight for it.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Comments?


	27. The Fear of Loss

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Sometimes, it makes him too weak to move.
> 
> Others, it makes him stronger.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Big thanks to CeresMaria for reminding me of a line from HTTYD that I really like. The exact line hasn't been said yet, but the idea alone helped me write this chapter in a (hopefully) satisfying way! You guys rock!

You and Faendal don’t bother waiting for the soldiers. Instead, you both take off, finding yourselves incredibly grateful that Faendal had insisted you both wear your armor when he gives archery lessons. Otherwise, you would be incredibly, irreparably, and totally _fucked_.

There’s a small group of boulders several meters up the road from the watchtower, and it’s there that you find Fenrer.

“Oh, good,” Fenrer mumbles. “I was starting to think you would never--”

As he turns to you, his entire expression falls, but it isn’t anger that you see there. For a split second, it almost looked like Fenrer was _afraid_.

If he was, he hides it with a scowl.

“What are you _doing here_?”

You look past him and examine the smoking remnants of the watchtower. By now, it’s mostly burning rubble, but the stench of charred human remains finds its way to your nostrils as easily as it had in Helgen. The dragon, however, is apparently long gone.

You smile at Fenrer and go with your gut.

“I’m looking for survivors.”

You try to step around Fenrer, but he catches your arm.

“ _No_ , you aren’t. You are going back to Whiterun, do you understand? Look, there’s Irileth’s group now. If you want to help, get back to the city and tell the guards--”

He only stops rambling when you abruptly shake his hand off of you.

“I will _not_ stand idly by while innocents die! What was it you said? ‘I’d much rather die fighting’? Well, so would I! And you can’t stop me, Fenrer.”

There’s a long, quiet moment where you really worry that Fenrer will try to waste more of your time in an argument, but just as you consider stepping around him, he sighs and rubs his eyes tiredly.

When he speaks, he sounds defeated.

“Fine. Stay. I can’t begrudge you that--not after [I failed in Helgen.](https://archiveofourown.org/works/16038701/chapters/37461779)” He pauses to sigh, but before you can ask what he means, Fenrer holds a hand up and shoots you an almost pleading look. “Just…be careful, alright?”

Baffled, you only shrug noncommittally before stepping past Fenrer’s stony shelter and rushing toward what remains of the tower’s stairs with Faendal on your heels.

Your gut was right, apparently. There is, in fact, a wounded soldier on the floor of the tower. He’s bent over and seated against the wall with a hand pressed firmly to the wound in his stomach in an attempt to keep his insides from becoming his outsides. Still, when you enter he attempts to stand before sinking back down with a groan of pain. The hand he uses to brace himself leaves bloodstains on the stone around him.

“N-No,” he whines quietly, “No, please, I…”

“Shhh,” you begin. Oh, _gods_ , he’s in bad shape. “We came with the city guard. We’re here to help you.”

A gesture is all it takes for Faendal to move up to the top floor and scout out the rest of the tower. By the time he returns, shaking his head mournfully, you’ve already taken a seat beside the wounded man and brought Healing Hands to life in your palms.

It takes a few minutes and a bit of effort, but the bleeding stops, and the torn flesh begins knitting itself back together. Eventually, the man can be pulled up into a more stable position with minimal pain.

“No,” he begins again, having caught his breath, “No, _please,_ you have to go. It…”

You lift your waterskin to his lips, recognizing trauma and shock and hoping he will relax with something in his system. Briefly, you lament the fact that you hadn’t brought along something stronger.

“Here, sir, drink up. It’ll all be okay. I can hear the others outside as we speak--” You could, and you were hoping they had brought a stretcher. “--and we’ll have you out of here in no time. If you’ll just relax--”

“ _No_ ,” he forces out, pushing your hands away. “You don’t understand. _It’s still here._ ”

Outside, someone screams, and the ground _shakes_ beneath your feet.

“Oh _shit_ ,” Faendal gasps from his place beside the window, drawing his bow and racing upstairs before you can even speak.

“ _Fuck_. Look, just--just stay here, okay?”

“Fine by me!”

Yeah, you probably should’ve known.

You draw your bow and step outside, nocking an arrow and taking aim at _an entirely different dragon than the one you saw in Helgen._

The shock freezes you for just long enough that the dragon turns to face you, robbing you of the opportunities granted by the element of surprise. Fear alone drives you to dive to the opposite side of the tower, and you take shelter there just as a blast of intense heat washes over you, scorching the steps and lighting up the night.

Faendal shouts your name from above, and you flash a hasty thumbs-up in his direction. You don’t bother to see if he registered that you’re still alive, but only because you don’t have the time.

You might never have the time again, of course, because you’re close enough to _feel_ the wind on your face as the dragon’s enormous wings propel it upward and over you.

Again, you roll to shelter, hiding behind a leaning bit of rubble--what _was_ this? A support column? An archway?--and firing your bow semi-blindly in the general direction of the creature.

“Hah! Take that!”

You can hear Faendal shouting triumphantly from somewhere above you, and it makes you laugh in a quick fit of hysteria.

Holy _shit_ , are you actually managing to hit this thing?

That’s...more than you expected, actually

The ground shakes and you fall on your ass when the dragon lands again, but the soldiers swarm in and begin hacking away at whatever they can reach. You fire one arrow after the other, but they just bounce off, and the dragon doesn’t seem to pay any more attention to them than you do to gnats in the summertime.

The dragon lifts again, and hopelessness washes over you.

Your group can’t fight forever, and you’ve already sustained casualties. This thing doesn’t seem any closer to death, but several of the guards seem ready to drop at any moment--whether that’s from wounds or simple exhaustion, however, you don’t know.

You’re genuinely considering sounding the retreat when a stray arrow rips through one of the dragon’s wings like it was wet paper.

The dragon roars, but it sounds different this time, and you hesitantly decide that it’s a sound of _pain._

“Oh, my gods.”

Experimentally, you fire an arrow near this new wound, and it, too, rips a hole in the delicate membrane that allows flight. When the dragon moves to swipe at one of the soldiers, the two holes tear, and a rip the length of your arm suddenly appears there, provoking a new growl of pain.

“Oh, my _gods_.”

You think you might know of a way to kill this thing.

“Faendal! Get its wings!”

If you live through this, you’ll have to buy Faendal dinner, because he acts without even questioning you.

You hear an exclamation of joyful surprise from Faendal’s general direction, but you’re too busy lining up new shots to register it. You’re trying to shoot a line down the dragon’s wings, and even though your aim is still dreadful and you don’t have the most powerful bow, the beast is so large that even when you ‘miss’ you still hit in the general area of your target.

 _Un_ fortunately, dragons are smart, too, and it doesn’t take long for the demon to figure out your plan. When it does, it spins to face you, surprisingly agile for a beast of that size, and spreads its wings wide and _lunges_ at your _fucking face, holy fucking shit._

Fortunately, Faendal is fucking _brilliant_ and--in a move that shouldn’t even be possible, probably--fires three arrows at once into the dragon’s newly exposed wing.

As the wing tears cleanly in half and you realize that you _fucking did it_ , you think, _Well, there are worse ways to die, I suppose._

Something sharp and jagged scrapes down your nose and pain blooms across your face like a springtime flower.

It’s the realization that you shouldn’t even be feeling pain right about now that makes you open your eyes--when had you closed those?--and look around.

Fenrer is standing over your still body, greatsword drawn and face pulled back in an animalistic snarl.

“ _That_ was a mistake.”

Logically, you know he’s not talking to you, but the growl in his voice and the hatred on his face and the way his eyes have gone silver in the firelight all combine to turn beautiful, perfect Fenrer into a walking _nightmare_.

(It may also have something to do with the fact that there _isn’t any fire over here_ that could be illuminating his inhuman eyes in such a way, but that doesn’t make any sense, so you imagine fire where there is none.

Subconsciously, though, you know it has nothing to do with the lighting.)

You don’t piss your pants, but you’ll be the first to admit that you manage that through willpower alone.

You’re still staring at Fenrer, horrified and awed in equal measure, when he _rushes_ the damn dragon, swings himself over its shoulder, and drives his greatsword into the damned thing’s skull.

There’s a horrific roar, the very briefest of struggles, and an earth-shaking thud.

And when the smoke clears, there’s Fenrer.

He’s bloodied and dirty and falling over in exhaustion.

But he _won._

“Dibella’s tits…”

The dragon’s breath leaves it in one great sigh, and the soldiers begin cheering raucously.

“Holy shit. He actually did it,” Faendal speaks from behind you.

You glance at him with a small, wry smile.

“Yeah,” you whisper, turning to examine Fenrer, who’s grinning triumphantly in the face of his adoring fans. Your eyes meet, and you look away first as his smile drops. “Yeah, I guess he did.”

You take a stabilizing breath and a step back, forcing yourself to prioritize.

Emotions can wait.

“Alright. Alright, there’s still a survivor in the tower. Faendal, I need you to go around and check on our fallen allies. See if there’s anyone I can still help. Bring them to the tower. If they can’t be helped, get the others to make them comfortable. If--”

The ground shakes, throwing you off your feet for the second time today, and you turn, fearful of the dragon and worried that it’s somehow not dead, just in time to see a gust of _something_ that shimmers like broken glass and moves like the wind rush from the beast’s mouth and dive into Fenrer’s chest.

Fenrer is knocked from his feet and thrown through the air like a ragdoll in a storm, and you’re _screaming,_ fuck, _why are you screaming?_

You run to Fenrer’s side, and the dragon dissolves into bones.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This is the first chapter I've written that has a really strong companion piece in Equilibrants. That bonus chapter doesn't follow the storyline of this one, but it does explain some of what's been happening, if you're interested.
> 
> Comments make the writing go.


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